Exam Software

[sjatkn]

8 minutes ago, network41 said:

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

I will pass this over to the Exams office team. They won't want to change this year as they have only just moved to Access by Examscreen due to the huge price increase in Exam WritePad.

 

[Davit2005]

On 08/05/2025 at 15:04, Steven-allsaints said:

 

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.

Put the question back to them in that case, what software do they want to use that is compliant with exam regulations. Let them fight between themselves. It is the exam officers responsibility at the end of the day. But I know what is likely to happen, they will give you the software to install 10mins before the exam starts, lol.

[SRCole]

Hi Everyone,

 

Just wondering how Access by Examscreen is going now for people? We are considering it for our school. Thanks for any info!

[AlistairB1983]

On 03/05/2026 at 15:09, SRCole said:

Hi Everyone,

 

Just wondering how Access by Examscreen is going now for people? We are considering it for our school. Thanks for any info!

 

We've just started using it - so have trailed it in the Year 10 mocks that just took place and will be using it for one of our upcoming Year 11s who needs a reader.

 

As a word processor, it's without issue. Does everything it needs to do.

As a scribe, it can get stuck with certain words. One student spent several minutes trying to get it to type 'dimming' without success before having to think of another way of saying it. This was unfortunately partially caused by the student's relatively strong Indian accent, but even some of our White British students have struggled at times.

As a reader, it has some issues. It can't read mathematical or scientific formulae correctly (e.g. pronounces H20 as aitch twenty, would pronounce y = x - 3 as why equals ex three (yes, it misses the minus symbol), etc.) and - particularly if using scanned - it can have difficulties when trying to highlight the words you want it to speak.

 

However, all that said, it's still going to save both the exams team (i.e. me) and the SEND team time and resources when it comes to exams. And considering how cheap it is, there's no real reason not to get it.

 

[Cazab]

As I understand it by the JCQ guidelines, students should only be getting scribes/readers if they have it during the course of their normal school tuition.
The above example shows if a student needs a scribe/reader and they have issues with the software, how can you trust it to be reliable and accurate, and trust that the student has the ability to know whether it has accurately taken down what they have said?

[AlistairB1983]

1 hour ago, Cazab said:

As I understand it by the JCQ guidelines, students should only be getting scribes/readers if they have it during the course of their normal school tuition.
The above example shows if a student needs a scribe/reader and they have issues with the software, how can you trust it to be reliable and accurate, and trust that the student has the ability to know whether it has accurately taken down what they have said?

 

The students themselves? They have to learn that the system is not 100% effective (neither is using a manual scribe - which I know to my own cost through personal experience in previous exam seasons), and so they need to learn where the system has gaps and how they go about overcoming them.

 

So in my above example, after that initial instance where the system struggled to understand what the student was saying, she learned that sometimes it has a problem in which case after the 2nd or 3rd attempt to say the word, if the software still didn't get it she put her hand up and asked the invigilator who told her how it was spelled and she typed it in manually.

 

Is the system perfect? No. It is going to be helpful for every student? No. We have one student who has MS who the system flatly couldn't understand, so she will be using her laptop that has predictive text enabled to allow her to type fast enough to complete her exams. But even with it's non-universal coverage, it's still saving the SEND department hundreds of pounds in terms of man hours, and allowing our (ever decreasing) pool of TAs to actually support existing students in lessons rather than be continually dragged into exams to support Year 11s/Year 13s (as they have been in previous years, and are being for the current summer season. We're losing over 100 man hours of TA time just to accommodate readers/scribes for our outgoing Yr11s/Yr13s).