Remote invigilation in vocational and technical qualifications
An exploratory study of the experiences of awarding organisations and candidates.
Applies to England
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Remote invigilation (RI), also known as remote proctoring, allows candidates to take assessments at a location of their choosing, while being supervised by an invigilator that ensures the assessment is completed under controlled conditions. The candidate may be in their own home, their place of work, or some other location as they take the assessment. RI is distinct from remote assessment in that the invigilator is not assessing the person sitting the assessment, their role is to ensure that the assessment is completed under the specified conditions. RI solutions provide similar services to those offered by invigilators at an examination school or college. They seek to prevent malpractice during the assessment, they validate each candidate’s identity, and, in some cases, they offer administrative support to candidates before, during and after the assessment.
RI has become increasingly prominent in the last decade, but its growth has accelerated considerably due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. During the pandemic, Ofqual set out special regulatory requirements for awarding organisations (AOs) offering vocational and technical qualifications (VTQs). These conditions allowed AOs to use a range of approaches to facilitate the provision of results to candidates taking VTQs in circumstances where normal assessments were disrupted. AOs were permitted to adapt their assessments where they were able to ensure that the validity and reliability of the qualification would be sufficiently maintained. An adaptation that was commonly used was the implementation of onscreen assessment paired with RI where candidates sat their assessments on a computer device and were supervised by an invigilator present in a different location.
While Ofqual permitted the use of RI during the pandemic to mitigate unprecedented challenges, this research should not be interpreted as an endorsement of widespread use of this form of invigilation in high-stakes assessments. With this research, we seek to deepen our understanding of RI and how it is used and experienced, therefore informing our approach to regulation in the future.
It is worth noting that this research took place at a time when generative artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT were not widely available and so the challenges such tools present for RI have not been explored in this report. These will, however, become increasingly important as AI tools are more widely used in the education sector, including the impact they have on the way assessments are designed and delivered.