2025 H2 Report Card for Digital Exams

Big assessment stories have studded the last six months. Want to read more? The first six months of 2025 (H1) can be found here, but here’s the H2 half-year 2025 Report Card.

June A cornerstone story saw a US remote proctoring supplier filing a legal demurrer, seeking to dismiss claims made by the State Bar of California, regarding delivery of the Bar exam. The State sued the supplier in May, accusing the company of failing to ensure its systems could process thousands of bar examinees. 

Perhaps the most extraordinary story in June saw co-operation between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda-backed M23 insurgents, to ensure tens of thousands of secondary students could sit their exams in rebel-held eastern Congo.

Perhaps equally extraordinary, Egypt mobilised its health care system, so that almost 2,500 ambulances, defibrillators, and oxygen cylinders were at the ready to support over 800,000 students during their final high school examinations.

On a lighter note, in June I spoke at the eAA international conference in London on how e-assessment can help rebuild trust in qualifications. And it wouldn’t be June without the perennial story about ‘inflation-busting’ school exam fee rises.

July In July, school exam board OCR claimed they were ‘working towards’ digital exams for GCSE Computer Science. Twenty years after the UK, Finland announced that their new Citizenship Test would be delivered digitally.

It wouldn’t be a British summer without a complaint from the House of Lords on how warm it is. Baroness Brown, chair of adaptation for the UK Committee on Climate Change, said school exams should be moved to cooler months, but omitted to detail how that could actually work.

Exam regulator Ofqual admitted “significantly overstating” the number of learners receiving extra time in exams for the last decade, stating issues with the statistics, dating back to 2014. A later statement by the regulator’s leader, claiming ‘a misunderstanding, not an error’, whereby the data didn’t relate to actual exam entries, raised eyebrows across the exam community.

Meanwhile, Malta and Estonia outlined a collaboration to digitise school exams.

August A re-heated story on adaptive digital exam delivery in England was obscured by the click-bait, BETT Show-worthy headline, ‘AI examiners marking your GCSEs’.

And as more countries press ahead with digitising, the Democratic Republic of Congo announced it had reduced national secondary school exam results publishing from three months to three days. Truly heroic, given the war-blighted situation detailed in June.

Meanwhile, a research study by University College London claimed learners perform better when typing exam answers compared to handwritten efforts.

September The Philippine Professional Regulation Commission started transitioning all of its exams to digital across all professional and vocational disciplines.

UK television’s Channel 4 released an exposé film, The Shadow Scholars, which detailed the rise of essay mills and the mainstreaming of offloading essay writing, often involving the blackmailing of learners.

The Victoria government in Australia accepted a report recommendation to refresh its school exam authority, detailing multiple issues with the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE). For example, some learners taking the 2024 VCE exams could access questions online ahead of time that were either the same or similar to those from the actual tests. Also, cover sheets for some sample exams had questions in transparent text, that could be revealed when copied and pasted into another document. 

Data breaches became a common news story in 2025. The UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) detailed findings that nearly a third (30%) of all insider attacks in the education sector involved stolen or guessed passwords, with 97% of those breaches committed by students.

September also saw US testing company Alpine acquired by Volaris Group. And at month-end, I was delighted to be invited by Peridot Partners to speak about examiner recruitment at their inaugural TPAC conference in London.

October The acquisition of City and Guilds was a contender for news story of the year. To barely a whisper from policy folk or mainstream press, the transaction by Greek-owned PeopleCert created a £300M+ awarding behemoth, with a significant place at the regulatory table. I blogged on the transaction, noting the sector’s public incuriosity, indifference, and impassivity on the deal.

In other October M&A news, AQA continued its venture into the vocational sector in acquiring Realise Training, and assessment and school services company RM plc raised £13.5M through a share raise.

Polling from Ofqual suggested that school cyber security incidents are decreasing; with 29% of schools experiencing a cyber security incident in the past academic year, down slightly from 34% previously. 

Vietnam announced they will move their high school graduation exam onto digital from June 2027, with a pilot in April-May 2026.

November The UAE’s Ministry of Education published its Guide to Combating Cheating and Exam Misconduct. Disciplinary measures against student malpractice and centre maladministration include requiring students to undergo behavioral rehabilitation programs in the event of proven violations.

Malpractice within Ireland’s electrician apprenticeship programme was uncovered by the Irish Times in November. Allegations included that exam papers had been available for sale to apprentice electricians for €50 the night before a test. 

England’s long-awaited Curriculum and Assessment Review (CAR) was launched this month – I blogged that given how lightly assessment was considered in CAR, the sector deserves a separate Assessment and Exam review.

In an eye-catching move, accountancy body ACCA announced they would only offer remotely invigilated exams where it does not have test centres, claiming ‘we have concerns around the ongoing security of remote exams.’

December The issue of rising numbers of exam accommodation requests became an increasingly mainstream issue in the opening weeks of December. Articles often had a narrative of the growth being at ‘a breathtaking pace’. Simultaneously, England’s exam regulator also published its literature review on how extra time impacts exam scores.

Rounding up the year, the UK Home Office announced that their HOELT English language test procurement would be for a fully ‘digital-by-default’ remote invigilated service.

I hope you enjoyed this 2025 review! Give me a follow, enjoy your holidays, see you in 2026!