Exam Software

[PotNoodleTech]

Exam board software is some of the worst around.  Good luck getting it all working in the new fangled intune cloud world.  It might be back to paper.

[machy]

11 minutes ago, mikes said:

so you really want software that will autosave on the fly.

 

Has anyone got Autosave working on office post 2016 without it being saved to OneDrive? 

[Dij]

1 hour ago, thimon said:

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.

when you use EWP do you have to use it with any other program like Readwrite/ text help ?

[synaesthesia]

How much is Trelson roughly?

I have a deep dislike for anyone that hides behind a "CALL FOR PRICING!" thing!

[thimon]

6 minutes ago, Dij said:

when you use EWP do you have to use it with any other program like Readwrite/ text help ?

How do you mean? You don't require any other software for it to work. We only make use of the word processing side of it. Students enter their, the school's and the exam's details when they launch the software. Auto saves silently after 60 seconds, autobackup enabled, etc. 

[thimon]

7 minutes ago, synaesthesia said:

How much is Trelson roughly?

I have a deep dislike for anyone that hides behind a "CALL FOR PRICING!" thing!

I was quoted £4,459 ex VAT per year a couple of years ago, when I did a comparison exercise for SLT. No idea what their current pricing is. 

[synaesthesia]

Just now, thimon said:

I was quoted £4,459 ex VAT per year a couple of years ago, when I did a comparison exercise for SLT. No idea what their current pricing is. 

Christ. Maybe time to make EWP available as a webapp

[Rob_D]

7 minutes ago, Dij said:

when you use EWP do you have to use it with any other program like Readwrite/ text help ?

If you want to use screen reading, then I think EWP can do that (AFAIK it hooks the windows narrator).

We've always used it in "full screen" kiosk type mode, for the most distraction free experience, but it can run in normal window alongside other applications.

[StephenPink]

6 minutes ago, Rob_D said:

If you want to use screen reading, then I think EWP can do that (AFAIK it hooks the windows narrator).

We've always used it in "full screen" kiosk type mode, for the most distraction free experience, but it can run in normal window alongside other applications.

I think since TextHelp (now EverWay I think?) bought EWP the reading function has been removed; as they want you to use Read&Write

Which as an aside, I cannot make heads or tails of the setup/licensing instructions... seems overly convoluted!

[thimon]

@StephenPink Exactly this. We also had to get clarification from EverWay regarding our license, as originally it seemed like they weren't going to honour our perpetual license which we got as an early sign up when EWP moved to a paid for model. We've now been told they will honour this year's license, however it looks like we'll need to sign up to the subscription model next year. Ridiculous!

[Rob_D]

9 minutes ago, thimon said:

We also had to get clarification from EverWay regarding our license, as originally it seemed like they weren't going to honour our perpetual license which we got as an early sign up when EWP moved to a paid for model. We've now been told they will honour this year's license, however it looks like we'll need to sign up to the subscription model next year. Ridiculous!

Boo! Someone should explain the meaning of perpetual to them.

What precipitated you asking them about your license? I unless they contacted us, or the license stopped working (neither of which have happened yet), I wouldn't think to check.

[thimon]

@Rob_D It was another school in our Trust who said they were told their license wouldn't be valid. I didn't approach EverWay out of fear they would then deactivate our license remotely, as we're running the latest version of EWP. Our Trust Office got involved and got the reassurance that nothing would happen this year. The original T&C's of the perpetual license is worded in a way that it's perpetual for as long as ExamWritePad is a trading company, which technically, it isn't anymore....

[Andrew_C]

English law really doesn't like anything "perpetual".

[mikes]

On 09/05/2025 at 14:49, synaesthesia said:

How much is Trelson roughly?

I have a deep dislike for anyone that hides behind a "CALL FOR PRICING!" thing!

 

Damn we didn't pay anywhere near £4,500 !!   We were quoted £200 a year for 20 licenses, so we bought 2 of those, we didn't need a license for every single pupil because we use different logons for students and at most 40 use the software at exactly the same period. We could never afford £4500 for exam software at that point it would almost be easier to just buy a batch of laptops

Edited May 12, 2025 by mikes

[simpsonj]

We're looking at introducing Access by Examscreen, has anyone used it? 

[midweek]

We'll be using exam.net for our prelims next week ("mocks" for you southerners...). We were using EWP but now it's tied into TextHelp (we purchased a 3 year license for their Claro stuff but they accidentally sent us a renewal at the end of year 1 saying it was over £10k a year to renew.....!) we've moved away from it to exam.net entirely. The staff like it and the pupils use it regularly. Will report back on how it goes in a couple of weeks though!

[Defiant-Run5910]

14 minutes ago, simpsonj said:

We're looking at introducing Access by Examscreen, has anyone used it? 

 

We have purchased and are planning to trial using this software this year (trial exams starting soon) - previously using EWP and then Read&Write for students with a Reader/Dictation requirement. So far it was simple enough to set-up and deploy, and a fraction of the cost of Read&Write. Nice to have one piece of software to handle everything for consistency. 

[kennysarmy]

On 14/11/2025 at 11:04, Defiant-Run5910 said:

 

We have purchased and are planning to trial using this software this year (trial exams starting soon) - previously using EWP and then Read&Write for students with a Reader/Dictation requirement. So far it was simple enough to set-up and deploy, and a fraction of the cost of Read&Write. Nice to have one piece of software to handle everything for consistency. 

 

Also does anyone know if it's possible to use this in a serverless cloud based school - looks like the install requires a locally stored "databas" - surely we should be moving to cloud apps these days

[tgrindo]

On 14/11/2025 at 10:44, simpsonj said:

We're looking at introducing Access by Examscreen, has anyone used it? 

We have just done a demo here with our exams team and they seem to like it from initial impressions - we've purchased a copy to use with our next wave of exams.

Edited November 20, 2025 by tgrindo
typo

[pete]

We're testing Access by Examscreen and spotted the unlock PIN is stored in a user-readable file.  Deciding now if that's a deal breaker.

 

I can probably circumvent that by setting Examscreen as the window manager (vs explorer.exe) and/or setting the config file as only readable by the exam accounts, IT and invigilators groups. 

 

(The file needs to be readable by the exam account running the software.)

[sjatkn]

We have just started using Access by Examscreen and have a problem with printing. In Access by Examscreen if a line break is added between paragraphs it does not print. See the screen shots. I was wondering if anyone else has seen this and resolved it?

 

This is from Access by Examscreen. There is an extra line break between Paragraph 2 and 3. 

 

This is from a PDF, printing to Konica Minolta, Samsung, or HP printers results in the same on paper. 

 

Thanks

[pete]

Haven't seen it (and don't have an examscreen install handy to test).

 

If you add more than two line breaks does it reduce them all to one?  If it does, that looks like a pre-printing cleanup choice.

 

The creator is pretty responsive via email.

[sjatkn]

15 hours ago, pete said:

If you add more than two line breaks does it reduce them all to one?  If it does, that looks like a pre-printing cleanup choice.

Yes, it does not seem to matter if multiple line breaks are used. If you put a full stop on the line then the spacing is correct, but that is not practical and the exams office staff are concerned that the examiners would not be happy about it.

 

I have raised the issue through the contact page on the website. 

[network41]

We use this , our exams officer loves it  https://safeexambrowser.org/news_en.html 

[sjatkn]

I've just had a response from the developer and they tested it overnight and found that the behaviour spotted here is a bug. He has fixed it for the next version which is due out in a couple of weeks.