The online test that will assess children's IT skills

E-ASSESSMENTS are intended to help schools educate pupils in the technology skills required by UK businesses.

Approval from the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) for full-scale rollout of the e-assessment project means the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), the body responsible for the tests, can start processes to test all year-nine pupils by 2008.

The online assessment will test 13- and 14-year-old pupils in their use of technology at the end of their key stage three period, before they embark on GCSEs.

Education Secretary Ruth Kelly's recently-released White Paper defined the project's remit.

The initiative, says QCA head of e-strategy Martin Ripley, will provide the impetus to wire up all of the UK's 4,000 secondary schools, to deliver the tests to more than half a million students annually by 2008.

'Just think of the political importance of the project,' he said.

Unlike other commentators, who have suggested Kelly has missed an opportunity to bring in wide-scale educational reform, Ripley says that he is 'genuinely pleased' with the White Paper.

'Fifteen months ago, ministers were timid about how far they could commit to e-assessments,' he said. 'The government is now clear enough, committed enough and confident enough to put their expectations in writing.'

Ripley says the project places an important emphasis on technology skills.

'IT is no longer peripheral,' he said. 'It's part of the core of UK education, alongside English and mathematics.'

As the initiative is being rolled out, Ripley will deal with three vital areas: project set-up, tests, and schools.

Project set-up

The QCA is now entering the third year of the six-year e-assessment project, the first two years having been spent building the back-office, administrative and central server systems.

The government allocated funding of £26m to the project, with offshore specialist Tata Infotech having carried out most of the £15m of software development.

The remaining £11m of funding will be used to build a bank of test materials to administer e-assessments and run a helpdesk. Schools will make their own decisions about hardware and PC equipment.

The QCA - along with the Department for Education and Skills and the British Educational Technology and Communications Agency - has already issued a minimum technical specification for schools, which includes networks, servers and PCs.

Currently, just 50 per cent of schools are at this minimum specification level.

Ripley says that the running of e-assessments in such an environment provides both an opportunity and a challenge.

'On this and other e-assessment projects, we have more than 60 configurations of hardware and operating systems in schools to deal with,' he said.

Ripley is 'comfortable' that schools' infrastructure will fit with the e-assessment platform. He says the 'unseen' platform development part of the project has been completed, and QCA now needs to concentrate on preparing the tests and schools.

'Both of those are significant developments,' he said.

The tests

E-assessments will help secondary schools to teach children the appropriate use and application of information communications technology (ICT).

'We're seeking to concentrate on the application of ICT skills, so that people can start developing abilities such as drag-and-drop, document layout and internet searching,' said Ripley.

Pupils taking an e-assessment have to solve real-life problems in a virtual world. One test requires them to research and publish an article on ethnic diversity.

Before the article is published, the pupils must collect information, conduct interviews and request copyright for artwork. In assessment terms, the QCA is not interested in the quality of the article itself.

'The assessment is complete once the child logs off,' says Ripley. 'We then know the calibre of ICT skills the student has to complete that problem.'

The schools

Last summer, the QCA ran a pilot with 100 schools to give it a better understanding of training, infrastructure and development needs.

And following last week's successful OGC review, the QCA will begin its national rollout of the test environment.

Next month the agency will start to work with 600 schools, and will use these institutions to run another evaluated pilot of the system.

'We're going to roll on through the summer at the rate of 100 schools a week and, as we have evidence that we can speed up, we will,' said Ripley.

At the same time, the QCA will train staff and speak directly with them when required.

As the rollout of the ICT e-assessment gathers pace, Ripley believes the test could provide a format for online examinations in other subjects.

'We're absolutely clear that once this project is established the world is our oyster,' he said.

How the tests work

Each school will have a one-month window in which to complete all test sessions.

The school's IT co-ordinator can use a system called the Flight Deck to allocate PC resources, and to automate the test session process to tell pupils when to take their e-assessments.

The QCA is putting in place familiarisation materials to allow children to prepare for the test.

Tests are sent to pupils' PCs from the school's servers via time release. Once the session is complete, the school's server takes the assessment from the PC and dials up a central server to download the pupils' results.

Confidential information is secured through encryption, to ensure that only the pupil with the correct log-on can access test materials.