Plans by all three exams boards to introduce on-screen GCSE exams have been delayed, amid disruption caused by the general election and curriculum and assessment review.
OCR, AQA and Pearson EdExcel had ambitions for digital exams in 2025 and 2026, in what was marked as a “pivotal moment” by board bosses. All require sign off by regulator Ofqual.
But OCR has now said July’s general election and the new government’s curriculum review means they’ll no longer be able to launch the “pioneering” digitally assessed computer science GCSE for first teaching in 2025.
A spokesperson said it has made “good progress” on the qualification and wants to make sure it works for school “in the long term”.
“Our development includes taking time to ensure the qualification is in line with any plans for the subject and for digital assessment more widely.”
Pearson EdExcel had planned to give students the choice to take GCSE English language and English literature on-screen in summer 2025. But this is now “unlikely” to happen next year.
Hayley White, assessment vice president, told a Westminster Education Forum this week they “shared” their “intention” with Ofqual to offer the qualification digitally earlier this year, but “those conversations stalled as we worked through the general election, and we’re picking up that dialogue now”.
A spokesperson said they are now proposing English “is the first core subject to be available as an onscreen exam to all schools within the next few years”.
It has shared its proposal with Ofqual “for their initial review and feedback”.
However, Pearson said it sees an “opportunity for access arrangements to be expanded” next summer to allow for on-screen assessment for students with additional needs. But it did not provide any further details.
Pearson said it will also look to introduce on-screen GCSEs in history and business from 2027. If there was “enough demand”, then most GCSEs and A-levels would be on-screen by 2030, they added.
Ofqual to ensure exams can be ‘delivered securely’
AQA has already confirmed a delay to introduce on-screen exams in GCSE Polish and Italian reading and listening components in 2026.
But Colin Hughes, chief executive, said there has been a “pause, not least because of the pre-election period”. It has been pushed back by at least a year.
The board expects to make announcements in the coming months. It wants a large-entry subject like English going digital by 2030.
An Ofqual spokesperson said it has not received any formal proposals for on-screen assessments.
“Before any on-screen assessments are accredited, we need to be assured that they can be delivered securely and fairly for students.”
They confirmed the curriculum and assessment review, which is due to report later in 2025, did not affect its work “with exam boards as they develop approaches to on-screen assessment”.
Sir Ian Bauckham, chief regulator who is an observer on the review, told the Schools and Academies Show that the pandemic exposed a digital divide.
He said: “It wouldn’t really make sense to put in place the enormous financial investment you would need in schools to equip everybody to do [digital exams] equally, efficiently across the country and not at the same time have a wider project for digitising education.
“So, our research that we’re doing has indicated we would get best value for that investment if digitising exams was part a wider digitisation project right across education.”
Ofqual and the Department for Education have been undertaking a feasibility study on “what it would take” to make GCSE and A-level exams fully digital.
AQA research found teachers’ biggest barrier to digital exams was a lack of infrastructure
