Digital exams to be introduced within years - AQA

Pupils in England could sit some of their GCSE exams digitally within the next few years, under exam board proposals.

AQA hopes that, by 2030, at least one major subject will be partly sat digitally in England.

It said the reading and listening parts of its GCSE Italian and Polish exams will be the first to be assessed this way, from 2026, subject to approval.

Such exams will "allow young people to use their digital skills", it said.

The exam board said it believes paper-based exams are still useful for assessing GCSE and A-level students, but the time has come to "widen the range of media we use".

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Digital exams are "truer to the digital world" students grow up and work in, better for the environment, can help those with special educational needs and mean students do not need to worry about "handwriting bias", it said.

They also have the potential to be more inclusive and fair, it added.

In the longer term, they could include interactive audio and video elements, such as conversations in parks for modern foreign language students.

Under the plans, students' devices would be offline in the exam hall so they would not be able to use the internet to search for information, or access artificial intelligence tools.

The board is calling for the move to digital exams to be made "in an evolutionary, not revolutionary, way".

Colin Hughes, AQA's chief executive officer, said: "Technology and change are two constants in education. After all, we went from quills to fountain pens to biros, and from scrolls to books. Moving to digital exams is the next step of this evolution.

"We cannot and should not change the way we conduct exams overnight. AQA has spent several years trialling and piloting digital exams and we will roll them out over many years.

"Our ambition is that students will sit a large-entry subject - that means, in our case, hundreds of thousands of simultaneous exams - digitally by 2030."

The exam board said it will continue talking with teachers and exams officers about how the changes should come about.

It said it will announce more detailed plans in 2024 about what support will be available to schools, and setting out which subjects will include digital assessments after 2026.

According to polling for AQA, more than two-thirds (68%) of young people surveyed agreed digital exams would be better preparation for future work, education or training.

One student. who took part in AQA's pilots of digital exams, said: "I feel like it's quicker to type my responses rather than write which gives me more time to develop more ideas."

Tom Middlehurst, curriculum, assessment and inspection specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), said it is "very encouraging" that exam boards are continuing to explore ways of moving to digital exams.

A digital approach has many benefits, he said, but also warned there must be sufficient investment so all students have equal access to the devices they will use in exams.

"Otherwise, this approach risks favouring students who have greater access to technology at home and could inadvertently increase the disadvantage gap," he said.

Earlier this year, the OCR exam board also piloted digital exams in UK schools.

In a policy document setting out plans to introduce a single qualification which will eventually replace A-levels and T-levels, the Department for Education said it would work with the sector and experts to "look again" at the type and format of GCSE exams needed at age 16.

It said it would consider whether it can "adopt digital solutions, such as on-screen assessment" to allow performance to be assessed in "more innovative and less onerous ways".