Has anybody every heard of a 'National Reference Test'

[DrBeaker]

Hi All,

 

Has anybody every heard of a 'National Reference Test' ?

 

Our exams officer has asked us to put this software onto computers, with no other information provided. I've asked for more info and explained that they should be aware that the stability of the internet connection, network or lack of issues with IT equipment or laptops etc on the day cannot be guaranteed as there's simply no way to guarantee that on the day

 

This is all I've been able to find.

 

https://www.nfer.ac.uk/for-schools/free-resources-advice/assessment-hub/introduction-to-assessment/understanding-the-national-reference-test/

 

Have any other schools been asked for this?

[noelmm]

We've done this in the past.

 

The only thing we needed to provide were internet enabled laptops and the people running the exam provided their own usb drives with the software installed on. The software was an exe that opened something similar to the Pearson on screen testing software. I remember telling our exams officer that if the internet went down it would cause the exam to fail however the company running the tests said the internet was only needed when the software was initially run to download the questions etc. into the testing software, after this point if the internet went down it wouldn't matter.

 

As our students can't run exe files we had to run the test using a heavily locked down teacher account with additional permissions to allow the software to run. I remember we insisted on scanning each usb drive for viruses before we plugged them in and we found around 25% of the drives didn't work and the testers didn't seem too bothered by that.

 

All in all it went smoothly and once it was setup we didn't have to do anything.