the e-Assessment Association

British Council Delivers Remote Proctored Exams At Scale for ACCA 

British Council Delivers Remote Proctored Exams At Scale for ACCA 
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Every quarter over 200,000 ACCA exams are held in British Council test centres worldwide. ACCA is committed to ensuring all their members worldwide have the chance to continue their professional journey during the pandemic, offering students in over 130 countries the chance to sit exams either at a test centre or at home, if test centres cannot open. 

Following the success of the introduction in June this year of British Council on demand remote proctoring of ACCA foundation exams as communicated in the September 2020 issue of the e-Assessment Association newsletter, ACCA then challenged the British Council with providing a scaled-up session based remote proctoring solution to enable ACCA to deliver up to 30,000 high stakes professional exams during their September 2020 exam session, and again in December 2020.

What does the solution offer?

The British Council solution allows ACCA to continue its model of high volume session based exams in test centres where possible, with securely delivered remote proctoring as a contingency. 

It includes exam delivery across a “follow the sun” 15 hour window over two consecutive 5- day weeks, 5 remote proctoring hubs covering all global time zones, an extensive network of highly trained and experienced remote proctoring staff, capacity planning to allow exam start slots every 15 minutes, one-to-one ID and room checks, and live remote proctoring of candidates through video streaming with live candidate chat support and communication. 

Any incidents are recorded as would happen in a test centre and the service complies with privacy and data security legal requirements.

Putting the candidate first

The candidate experience has been at the heart of all planning for the service. The importance of clear and detailed communications with candidates prior to the exam day cannot be over emphasised, and priority was given at all times to ensuring ACCA was able to provide candidates with a full understanding of every step in the process. This included helping the candidate understand what steps they need to take to ensure they are prepared, terms and conditions of the remote proctoring service, and the potential issues the candidate may experience if the guidance is not followed.

Sarah Corcoran, Director of e-Assessment Transformation, ACCA commented;

“Following on from our success with introducing remote proctoring for our foundation exams, we are delighted with the new service the British Council offers to use their network of highly trained invigilation staff to provide both remote proctoring hubs and staff to enable ACCA to deliver high stakes session based exams on a large scale. Over an incredibly short period of time we worked closely with the British Council and our technology partner to build the capacity for high volume remote proctored exams and offer this reassuring contingency to our candidates.”

What next for this service?

In order to reassure students that they can plan their career progression without worrying about ongoing COVID restrictions, ACCA aims to continue to offer this remote proctoring service as a contingency if test centre delivery is not possible. The British Council is now actively working with technology partners to offer this service to other clients, using British Council’s own hubs and remote proctoring expertise, We welcome the opportunity to discuss how British Council could extend this expertise and support to other Awarding Organisations.

 

 For further information please contact [email protected] 

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