Exam Software

[Steven-allsaints]

we are looking for some software that will allow us to give the students a blank document for their exams as we have several that require it due to SEND or injury, we dont want to use word as it does not meet the requirments from the exam board that we are aware of, we have looked at ExamWritePad and as IT we love it, but the finance team don't want to pay out the price for it, as budgets are getting tighter as we all know, so my question is with wordpad being removed from the newest versions of windows 11

[psydii]

Unless you are tiny, the cost of ExamWritePad is insignificant compared to the cost of running Public Exams. Perhaps your finance team are lacking the appropriate perspective.

[Steven-allsaints]

1 minute ago, psydii said:

Unless you are tiny, the cost of ExamWritePad is insignificant compared to the cost of running Public Exams. Perhaps your finance team are lacking the appropriate perspective.

Yeah we know, and totally agree we are trying to get them to understand that it is not expensive when you consider that the students that require it DO require it.

[PotNoodleTech]

See the exams manager/officer about it.   It can be taken out of the exams budget on their orders.  "I need for these pupils to sit exams"

 

Exams budget is usually more than site and IT added together so take it from that massive pot.

[Steven-allsaints]

1 minute ago, PotNoodleTech said:

See the exams manager/officer about it.   It can be taken out of the exams budget on their orders.  "I need for these pupils to sit exams"

 

Exams budget is usually more than site and IT added together so take it from that massive pot.

 

that is the budget we want to use, the answer was still no, even when speaking to the headteacher personally they cannot justify the cost we we have never needed it before, even when we explained that the software we are currently using will be gone within the year.

[PotNoodleTech]

What a bunch of morons.

[Olliedawg]

Steven, if you DM me I can potentially supply you with the latest version of EWP before it went onto the paid version...

[psydii]

As Head of Centre, I think this is their problem. 

 

If they haven't managed their budget effectively so that they can weather an unexpected £400 charge to ensure  students are able to  compliantly sit public exams.... ::shrug:: 

 

You've offered the solution. Since they are not accepting of the IT Lead solution, maybe the Head of Centre  can ask their peers how they do it, and let you know?

 

 

Edited May 8, 2025 by psydii

[AlistairB1983]

The school has a obligation to comply with JCQ regulations and provide those students with "appropriate resources to complete their examinations". An appropriate resource in this instance is going to be software that allows them to type their answers, without restricting their ability to access SPaG marks - so not Word.

 

Without access to Wordpad, there isn't going to be much option left but to pay for another piece of software. And quite honestly you have already found the one that is the most reliable for the cheapest price. There isn't going to be some piece of free magic software out there that's reliable enough for you to use in public exams. If there was, everyone would already be using it.

 

So, at this point, they have two choices:

 

1) Pay for the software and remain in compliance with JCQ regulations or

2) Don't

 

If Finance and the Headteacher insist on going down route #2, I would strongly urge getting them to put their decision in writing, as that's the sort of decision that could end up being career-ending if JCQ catch wind.

 

 

 

[Steven-allsaints]

6 minutes ago, AlistairB1983 said:

The school has a obligation to comply with JCQ regulations and provide those students with "appropriate resources to complete their examinations". An appropriate resource in this instance is going to be software that allows them to type their answers, without restricting their ability to access SPaG marks - so not Word.

 

Without access to Wordpad, there isn't going to be much option left but to pay for another piece of software. And quite honestly you have already found the one that is the most reliable for the cheapest price. There isn't going to be some piece of free magic software out there that's reliable enough for you to use in public exams. If there was, everyone would already be using it.

 

So, at this point, they have two choices:

 

1) Pay for the software and remain in compliance with JCQ regulations or

2) Don't

 

If Finance and the Headteacher insist on going down route #2, I would strongly urge getting them to put their decision in writing, as that's the sort of decision that could end up being career-ending if JCQ catch wind.

 

 

 

 

Thank you for this we totally understand are trying our hardest in IT to make this information get through to them.

[dmj]

vi doesn't have a spellchecker, it's free and only takes a decade to learn.

Give them that, see what happens to the exam results, then watch the money flood in next year.

 

On a serious note, I'm sure there are many free text editors that meet the specs, but I've not used any. IIRC we used a web based one for chromebooks but that was a few years back. 

[thimon]

I compared ExamWritePad, Trelson and Digiexam a couple of years ago, to show SLT that we were using the correct exam platform for us. This included pro and cons and costs. They were happy with my recommendation to continue using ExamWritePad. I can send you a copy if you want to DM me your email? 

[strawberry]

School logic. Can pay for the exams and the laptop but think software is something that should be free.

 

5 years of study for that student all jeopardized because finance think software is something that can be scrimped on. Maybe the IT teacher can just knock something up.

[ThomL]

Although a pain, aren't you able to get word compliant if you spend enough time configuring GPOs etc? I'm sure we used Word with a bunch of tweaks at my last school and it was deemed compliant.

 

In my current school we are running an old version of EWP, but I'm not a fan of running software that isn't being patched so have been thinking to the future and Word had entered my mind - can anyone share why Word would not meet requirements with tweaks?

 

Haven't checked pricing for EWP since it was sold

[AlistairB1983]

1 hour ago, ThomL said:

can anyone share why Word would not meet requirements with tweaks?

JCQ guidance doesn't specify anything in terms of which software etc, merely that it's the use of "a word processor with the spelling and grammar check facility/predictive text switched off". 

 

So I guess it would depend what said tweaks were. If it was something 'permanent' and/or behind an admin password, then no reason why it wouldn't meet the requirements. If it's just a menu setting that can easily be changed back without authorisation, then as a former EO and current manager of an EO, I'd feel somewhat uncomfortable with that, given the student could re-enable the settings, do their exam with everything enabled, and then disable them again. Which for most of our students is unlikely, but I have had some previously who I know would definitely try it!

[ThomL]

Wordpad/notepad could also be an option but a bit ugly. From a quick google it looks like you can disable spelling and grammar with GPO, we took things further than this to limit items displayed in the ribbon I believe. 

 

I think Word can do the job needed it just takes effort to get it configured correctly. Maybe this has changed with the new Office versions though - as mentioned it was several years a go I had this setup.

 

 

[psydii]

56 minutes ago, ThomL said:

I think Word can do the job needed it just takes effort to get it configured correctly. Maybe this has changed with the new Office versions though - as mentioned it was several years a go I had this setup.

 

 

I used to do this for 16+ years, but then it got to the point where new features didn't seem to honour the settings, and the documentation didn't even acknowledge the new features, so we bit the bullet and moved to EWP and no-one in the IT office has touched the config since. A real "It just works" product.

[thimon]

Any GPO changes for Word we found didn’t stick with the 365 versions, or could be changed by the user. Because of that we had to drop it and move to ExamWritePad. 

[3s-gtech]

We still use Word, but there is an ever growing list of GP settings and registry hacks to get it right, and if pushed it still may not be resilient enough. The familiarity of it for students is good, but short of it having an Exams Mode it is a bodge.

[Dij]

Do you need to use any other software with Exam word pad or can you use it as a stand alone software?

 

Also are there different licenses for EWP? 

[thimon]

Yeah it was the constant fire fighting and bodging that I didn't like. At least with ExamWritePad it just works and you know it's properly locked down.

[StephenPink]

With 365 Word we had real issues with the embedded Smart Lookup tools. Like others we're moving to EWP - however still need a better solution for the iPads... 

[thimon]

@StephenPink A while ago we had one student that needed to use an iPad due to their sight. We properly locked it down via Jamf, only allowing the Notes app to run, was able to disable spellcheck. We found that worked fine for exams.

[StephenPink]

Just now, thimon said:

@StephenPink A while ago we had one student that needed to use an iPad due to their sight. We properly locked it down via Jamf, only allowing the Notes app to run, was able to disable spellcheck. We found that worked fine for exams.

Yeah we've got them locked down via Jamf School, however we went through with the Exams Office at least 10 different apps... Word was the only one deemed "acceptable"... something to do with fonts/headers/footers I can't remember. We have to also use Guided Access to lock down certain areas of the screen during the exam. If only EWP had an iOS version!

[mikes]

Before we used ExamWritePad we used Word - I set up a special account that had deny permissions on the Spell/Grammar check DLL's - it was such a hacky way to do things, I couldn't believe this is how exam boards expected things to be done? (in actuality they just published vague requirements and it was on us). It did work - this was on Office 2016 however, no idea if it would work on Office 356 -  I had to disable all the options for spell/grammar check in the GPO's, which didn't really do anything, then deny the access to the spell/grammar check DLL's - you can outright delete the DLL's if you have a dedicated station, using the file permissions via GPO allowed us accounts where spellcheck still worked.

 

However it was such a hacky and clunky way to do it, I was always worried that MS would push out an update where the spellchecker would work differently, and then we'd be doing exams with spellchecker on unbeknownst to us, using ExamWritepad just felt a lot better, no chance of it suddenly changing.

 

You could use notepad but I was told it was no good for a very dumb reason I can't remember - either because it didn't support headers or because there was no word/line count (as if there is one on a sheet of A4?)  - thing is notepad has no autosave and you will have events where a laptop shuts down / kid closes the document without saving - so you really want software that will autosave on the fly.

 

We ended up having to move from EW to Chromebook software called Trelson (which is basically a web based exam client, but it works well) because we had to use Chromebooks, we had so many special considerations there is no way we can afford to use Windows laptops for the 20+ students a day. 

 

It shows to me anyway how clownish and how little effort the exam bodies put into their electronic exams when they don't even give centres proper instructions on how to carry out the exams.