The Curriculum and Assessment Review – A sparkling mandate for digital exams or a complete washout?

Brits expect fireworks on 5th November. But few from the digital exam and assessment sector expected pyrotechnics and revelations from the UK government’s Curriculum and Assessment Review, published today.

Education journalist Warwick Mansell claims the review team is ‘experienced and serious’. I’m curious on their approach to the UK’s decades-long track record of digital exams and assessment.

The sector must reflect: what problems are we solving? Today’s interview with Professor Francis, who chaired the Review, is asked, ‘What issue are you trying to solve?’ The same question should always be asked of digital exams and assessment. The sector has all the answers, but learners cannot wait for government to ask the questions. University admission by real grades, not guesstimates? Full transparency of the exam process? Equity for SEND learners? Computing GCSE examined on an actual computer?

The Review’s launch has already been blighted by the government imposing a new test, prior to publication. And further ignoring the Review’s ‘leave it alone’ recommendation on league tables, with sweeping reforms. This shows how assessment policy and practice is muddled, un-coordinated, and blighted by Assessment Tourists.

Brits are great at digital, so what’s the real problem? Here’s the open goal: many digital exam companies – some huge, some boutique, all with decades of success, are run by Brits. Yet the Review entirely ignores that. Imagine how must it feel to see other countries digitise exams successfully at scale? To see 4-facet, regulated English exams being delivered, processed, and certificated in 24 hours?

The Review calls for digital AI skills and financial literacy. But to assess these areas on paper in 2025 seems laughable to the assessment community. Perhaps the Review didn’t have enough time to uncover how those areas have already been assessed digitally and regulated by Ofqual for decades? Not forgetting that the denigrated Functional Skills have been delivered digitally for over 15 years? ‘Digital skills in the curriculum’ without offering proven digital assessment methods appears mis-guided.

Paper exams are an antagonist to digital literacy The Review is right to state that the curriculum must respond to social and technological change. But assessment also needs to respond. The Review highlights the widespread concern that young people are not developing adequate digital literacy skills. But a paper-based exam system is an antagonist for digital literacy and anachronistic. A mention of the adoption of on-screen assessments for English is helpful. Presumably the Review panel noted the explosion of millions of multi-facet English digital tests, of which many are Ofqual-regulated.

Test Developers and Psychometricians understand test length and domain coverage, not regulators Just as a no-frills management accountant can easily cut 10% from business costs, the removal of a pesky question or two from an exam paper is a depressingly low ambition. The government’s response is this will be 2.5 to 3 hours per learner on average. Test development professionals will wince at the comment that the regulator has modelled test time reductions. It’s the job of (independent) psychometricians and test developers to determine optimum test length and domain coverage. The trimming of GCSEs isn’t about less pages in an exam booklet. This is about assessing better in a shorter time.

Personalised adaptive online tests delivered in Wales

A pity that the Review couldn’t venture beyond Offa’s Dyke to learn how Wales have been assessing digitally with an adaptive, shortened test, for almost a decade. Reducing the disruptive impact of (formative/ diagnostic) assessment, by using a digital device that the learner already uses, should be compelling. There are also proven solutions to assess oracy skills at scale.

How should the digital exam sector respond? The digital exam sector are not conspirators, wishing to blow up the paper-based exam world. Rather than uncover 36 barrels of gunpowder, we deserve a separate Assessment and Exams Review.

The sector must tell and re-tell the full story on the global school sector. The e-Assessment Association has called for a clear digital implementation roadmap. I’d go further and re-set the agenda with position statements, specific case studies, calling out great examples noting big operational wins that impact learners and educators.

The sector must stop assessment tourists and generalists re-heating and repeating debunked tropes. To repeat: The sector has all the answers, but learners cannot wait for government to ask the questions.