The Summer Exam Series of 2040

Around one million students in England are currently part-way through sitting their GCSE or A level exams. In many ways, they will have a very similar experience to my generation, and the generation before me. Rows of desks, invigilators, see-through pencil cases, and chunky calculators for the more mathematical exams. But there are some signs that that model is changing. Will exams look the same in 2040? I expect big changes in how exams are delivered, but fewer changes in their underlying design.

Start with delivery:  

First – from pen and paper to digital. While Ofqual has been cautious, and some politicians remain opposed, it is hard to imagine a world where exams continue to be fully pen and paper in 2040. It is already bizarre that many students studying coding in computer science have to write their code out by hand in the exam. Or that students who will go on to university and type all their essays have to suffer hours of back-to-back hand cramping in the preceding years. While progress is likely to be slow and measured, the direction of travel feels clear. What is more up for grabs is the extent to which digital exams simply replicate current paper-based ones, or alternatively, innovate to improve assessment – for example using virtual reality to assess spoken language ability for modern foreign languages.  

Second – from exam halls to exam centres. We already know that many schools and colleges struggle with the space needed to host exams. In a world of constrained budgets, very large halls can be a luxury. This could become even more challenging in a more digital world. One simple reason is that vertical screens are easier to see across desks than horizontal sheets of paper. Another is that sports halls may not be suitable for charging hundreds or thousands of devices at once. The solution? One model would see us move away from centre-specific exam halls towards use of shared facilities. This could mean thousands of students across a town or borough sitting exams in a large venue – not dissimilar to driving theory tests. Of course, this would not be simple. It would require new arrangements for safeguarding, transport, invigilation, accessibility, contingency planning and digital infrastructure. But the current model already places a significant operational burden on schools, and that burden may become harder to bear.

Third – from hot halls to climate-controlled spaces. A recent climate change committee report said that “Taking an exam on a 32°C day leads to around a 10% lower likelihood of passing compared to a 22°C day.” On their current estimates, that could mean “the average number of days per year that indoor temperatures reach or exceed 35°C in 20,000 English schools will increase by 70% compared to present day.” With scrutiny on exam results always sky high, it is clear to me that at some point government will be forced to ensure that schools, or exam centres, are able to keep young people cool. Or, more radically, we will see some exams move out of the summer period altogether.  

So potentially a lot of change in how exams are delivered – but there are also things I expect to remain the same, and those centre more around their overall design.

First – the use of summative exams in the first place. Many people on the more progressive end of the education spectrum will be howling at me that with better formative assessment available, why would we need children in exam halls at all by 2040? I think we still will. I think formative and diagnostic assessment have immense potential to improve education. But they will struggle to provide young people with a portable, externally recognised signal of achievement that they can use with colleges, universities, employers and training providers. In other words, they might fulfil the accountability and educational functions of assessment – ensuring that teachers and schools are doing a good job and helping them teach students in the most effective ways possible – but they are unlikely to deliver the element of assessment that is about facilitating progression and acting as a signal to others.  

Second – the amount of assessment, particularly post-16. The government has made it clear it wants to see a reduction in the burden of assessment (of around 10%), focussing particularly at GCSE. But the general education policy zeitgeist is towards greater breadth – and this could impact exam time. At A level in particular, now defunct proposals for the Advanced British Standard highlighted a broad truth – we are falling more and more out of love with the idea of doing only three A levels. It is a peculiar feature of our education policy debate that we champion breadth… and lower assessment time… and student choice… and consistently covering the basics of maths and English… and high standards for all. We miss that these things are often in tension with each other. The more we push for every student to study the same core maths and English content up to 18, the more we are likely to increase and not decrease assessment time. The government’s chosen solution to the resits ‘problem’, a level 1 stepping-stone qualification, further reinforces this prediction.    

Third - human involvement. While we know that AI will be transformative in many ways – particularly in authoring of question papers and quality-assuring exam marking – we also know that regulatory scrutiny on GCSE and A level providers is extremely high. This will mean, in my opinion, it will be almost impossible for awarding organisations to totally automate any of their processes in the near future. The successful awarding organisations will not be those that automate the most – they will be those that use AI to improve speed, quality and consistency while preserving public trust, transparency and human accountability.

The summer series of 2040 may involve fewer pens, fewer school sports halls, more climate-controlled venues and far more digital infrastructure. AI may support everything from question development to marking quality assurance. But the fundamental purpose of GCSEs and A levels is likely to remain recognisable: externally trusted qualifications that give young people a portable signal of achievement.