The conditions and rules for taking an assessment, including the timing and scheduling, create important differences in how the student engages with and experiences it. This chapter discusses the four broad categories that reflect the conditions in which assessments might be taken and the timing of assessments. It also provides examples of different conditions and timing for assessment tasks across certificates internationally. The chapter discusses the validity and reliability associated with different conditions and associated challenges. It finishes with an overview of assessment conditions and timing and implications for validity, reliability and manageability.
The Theory and Practice of Upper Secondary Certification
Abstract
Chapter 2 of this report introduces a matrix for discussing the ways in which upper secondary certificates differ across systems. The matrix introduced four broad types of assessment conditions:
Conditions not specified
No constraints
Some constraints
Strictly controlled conditions.
Across the systems and certificates mapped for this report, it is common for certificates (55 out of 71) to include at least one assessment component with strict assessment conditions. Just over half of certificates (42 out of 71) include a component which is not specified at the national or state level – leaving the setting of conditions up to teachers or schools – or where there are some or mixed restrictions. Figure 4.1 shows how many certificates use different types of conditions. Note – most certificates include multiple assessment components, and these may be categorised differently. For example, Greece’s Apolytirio (certificate for general Lyceum students) includes an exam component, delivered under strictly controlled examination conditions, and a coursework component where the conditions of assessment are not specified centrally as teachers determine how students are assessed.
Number of certificates by assessment conditions
Note: Most certificates include multiple components.
Source: Transitions in Upper Secondary Education Certificate and Assessment mapping exercise, data collected across 2024 and 2025.
Conditions for assessment not specified
Where an assessment system does not make specific requirements on the conditions for assessment, it may be because there is a policy intention to allow schools, teachers or students the flexibility to design and manage conditions that fit their context. Among the 71 upper secondary certificates mapped for this report, 42 include a component for which the conditions for assessment are not specified (Table 4.1).
Notes: In Greece, students in Vocational High Schools work towards both the Ptychio and the Apolytirio.
BTECs are a brand of qualifications and not a specific type of qualification. BTECs are offered by Pearson, an awarding organisation. The term BTEC is often used more broadly by students, their families and schools to refer to vocational qualifications that are taken alongside A levels. However, the mapping in this report is specific to Pearson’s ‘BTEC Nationals’.
Source: Transitions in Upper Secondary Education Certificate and Assessment mapping exercise, data collected across 2024 and 2025.
The resultant flexibility associated with not specifying conditions may help – or be felt to help – ensure that assessment is close to the learning, authentic, and less stressful for the student. In systems where teachers are well-trained in assessment approaches, this may be appropriate. However, in all cases when assessment conditions are not specified, there is no visibility of the conditions (or freedoms) that have been imposed, and so no way to know whether there has been consistency and fairness across schools, teachers or even individual students.
No constraints, restrictions or rules on assessment conditions
It is fairly rare to include an assessment component within high-stakes certification that has no or very limited constraints, restrictions or rules for the conditions in which students are assessed. Across the upper secondary certificates mapped for this report, this is used in only seven certificates, five of which are certificates used exclusively for vocational education programmes (Table 4.2).
Notes: In Greece, students in Vocational High Schools work towards both the Ptychio and the Apolytirio.
In Scotland, Vocational Qualifications include National Certificates, National Progression Awards, Higher National Certificates, Higher National Diplomas, Foundation Apprenticeships.
Source: Transitions in Upper Secondary Education Certificate and Assessment mapping exercise, data collected across 2024 and 2025.
Assessment with no constraints is most common in the assessment of workplace skills. For example, the vocational school leaving certificate in Portugal (Secondary school completion certificate and diploma – Professional certificate) to assess on-the-job training. In this Portuguese example there are no specific or pre-determined tasks that students must do, and students are assessed on their competence by completing the tasks that naturally arise for them to do in the workplace. Aside from practical and logistical constraints, like needing to be in a workplace environment, there are no constraints or restrictions on how students can demonstrate their competencies, and students can use all the tools and technologies that would ordinarily be available to them in the workplace.
Students may also experience assessment with no constraints or restrictions in some aspects of their general educational curriculum, especially those aspects related to personal development, such as self-evaluations and reflections. In Korea, students can gain credits from ‘Creative Experiential Activities’, which is a component of the certificate designed to support students’ broader and cross-curricula learning and their character development (see Annex 4.A for more details). Creative Experiential Activities can include discretionary and self-governing activities, club activities and career activities where it might be desirable for students to work together and build a wide range of collaborative, communicative and civic competencies.
Validity and reliability
When assessment practices allow evidence to be gathered with no constraints on assessment conditions, the assessment process does not interrupt or interfere with the learning programme, theoretically maximising the validity of the assessment. The assessment result may be felt to be more authentic and may provide reassurance that the student can apply the skills and knowledge in real-life situations. In this instance, authenticity of assessment evidence will replace reliability as a way to ensure credibility. With no defined constraints on how the assessment evidence may be gathered, this may be felt to maximise the manageability of the assessment process.
Associated challenges
Stakeholders may find it difficult to accept that a lack of defined conditions is reliable or credible. Where the student may continue to improve their work before it is assessed, there may be a risk that validity is reduced rather than increased, as the student may have re-done the work so many times that it does not provide a fair reflection of their level of skills and knowledge.1
It is possible for a system to be very open in terms of the conditions in which assessment evidence is to be gathered or generated, but still to specify detailed requirements for the items of evidence that have to be collected, meaning that the advantages of not specifying the conditions of assessment are lost. A detailed list of assessment evidence to be gathered creates a risk to the manageability of the assessment process no matter how open or closed the assessment conditions.
Some constraints, rules or restrictions on assessment conditions
This is an intermediate category – where assessments are not taken in tightly controlled examination conditions yet there are some restrictions on the conditions in which students can produce a task. An assessment component like this is included in just under half of the upper secondary certificates mapped for this report (31 out of 71) (Table 4.3).
Notes: In Scotland, Vocational Qualifications include National Certificates, National Progression Awards, Higher National Certificates, Higher National Diplomas, Foundation Apprenticeships.
Source: Transitions in Upper Secondary Education Certificate and Assessment mapping exercise, data collected across 2024 and 2025.
Across OECD countries, this category is frequently used when there are assessments other than exams, such as projects or portfolios, which take place during the year and/or in the classroom context. In some cases, it means that assessment is not an ‘on the day’ experience, but the student is able to redraft work in the light of further learning or feedback. The assessment organisation may seek to control the number of times that the student can rework, the amount of input or support they can receive or the kind of resources that they can use when carrying out the assessment task. Alternatively, if the assessment takes place during a defined window there may be different conditions imposed for different parts of the window: for example, few conditions while the student is gathering information, but a requirement for a write up to take place in very tightly controlled conditions. For example, in the Higher English qualification in Scotland, there is a requirement for students to produce a portfolio of writing. Much of the work can be done unsupervised, including outside the classroom, but the first full draft of the piece of writing must be produced in class within a four-hour period (See Annex 4.A). Further work can then be carried out outside class time, but a final write-up must also be completed in controlled conditions, and with additional teacher checks to ensure that the work is the student’s own.
Validity and reliability
Systems use a mix of flexibility and constraint in assessment conditions to trade off validity and reliability considerations. Openness and flexibility in conditions are typically designed to increase validity, for example, by allowing the student to plan a research or practical activity, and/or to seek resources and materials. Constraints, by contrast, will be selected to try to maximise reliability, for example an assessment in examination conditions at the end of a practical or vocational project. In practice in the mapping undertaken for this report, this category of mixed constraints was counterbalanced with other strictly controlled assessment tasks. All but three of the upper secondary certificates which include assessments with some restrictions also include assessments assessed under strict, exam-like conditions (28 out of 31 upper secondary certificates). The ways in which this intermediate category is used across OECD countries reflects this trade-off, where systems use some conditions or restrictions to provide a degree of common standards and reliability for tasks developed and undertaken with a high degree of flexibility.
Associated challenges
The main challenge of a mixed or intermediate condition is the risk that neither validity nor reliability is assured. For example, one approach may allow the student to carry out independent research in real time, with full access to resources and the support of other people, but then require them to write up their findings in more constrained conditions, perhaps with rules on the amount of their sources that can be used in the final assessment. It could be argued that these conditions do not increase the validity of the assessment, since it is not a feature of any independent project in the ‘real world’ that one has to write it up without access to research material. One could argue that, in fact, such conditions turn the final assessment into a mechanistic assessment of memory, since the student may have tried to memorise their ‘best’ response and the notes that they take into the assessment may be designed simply as memory joggers. For example, this has been found to be the case for students taking foreign language examinations at GCSE and A level in England and Wales. Ofqual, the qualifications regulator, found that instead of testing students’ skills in writing in the foreign language, the way in which the coursework assessment operated encouraged students to prepare a piece of writing, memorise it and then to repeat it under controlled conditions. (Opposs, 2016[1]).
Student use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in high-stakes assessments
The conditions in which students take assessments also shapes their access to online resources, notably generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies. Students’ access to, and potential use of, AI has become a much-debated policy issue, especially in light of its growing availability. Concerns have arisen that AI tool use is often undetectable and its performance now sufficiently sophisticated that an entirely AI-generated work could attain a passing grade. However, evidence for this is mixed and depends on task composition, marking style, and a variety of other factors. Studies aiming to evaluate AI performance on high-stakes assessments (i.e. (NCFE, 2024[2])) are often limited in key ways: they rely on AI prompts generated by researchers, which do not necessarily reflect how actual students use the tools, and they do not account for whether these results hold true across all subjects and all markers.
To date, no country allows the use of AI tools under examination conditions, but some countries’ policies mention the use of AI tools for student projects or for coursework (see Annex 3.B. Projects and portfolios: New Zealand) (Ofqual, 2024[3]) (Scottish Qualifications Authority, 2024[4]) (New Zealand Qualifications Authority, 2025[5]). In conversations, Informal Working Group participants from Austria, Denmark, Norway, and Scotland noted an interest in encouraging the regulated use of AI in high-stakes assessments outside an examination context. Tools for regulation are largely preventative in nature. They include guidelines (maintained by an honour code), training for students and markers and periodic investigation of student responses. For example, in England, the Joint Council for Qualifications has released guidance about AI use in assessments and what constitutes misuse (Joint Council for Qualifications, 2025[6]).
Four models of use currently explored by country participants in OECD conversations include:
1. Human-in-the-loop: Students are allowed to use AI tools as they wish, but they are obligated to demonstrate that they reviewed the work in some way, either through a reflective written component or alternative means such as an oral examination.
2. Specific uses: Students are allowed to use AI tools during specific phases of the task, or for specific uses within the task (for instance, for brainstorming but not for writing, as a feedback generator but not as a writer, etc.)
3. Any use with citation: Students must cite the use of AI wherever they use it, but they are not permitted to cite it as a sole source.
4. Any use under supervision: Students are permitted access to the entire range of information and tools available on the internet, as long as they are accessed and used under supervision either in the moment (via tools such as surveilled browsers) or asynchronously (by collecting student scripts used to dialogue with generative AI tools).
Box 4.1 discusses public and policy conversations on AI use in upper secondary assessment, including arguments for and against AI use based on how this affects key principles of fairness, relevance, manageability and credibility.
Due to the prominence of AI in public debate, policymakers, assessment developers and awarding bodies are currently developing positions on the extent to which students can use AI in assessment. Public – and policy – conversations are very much framed around questions of authenticity (are students cheating if they use AI? is the work really their own?), fairness (to what degree does AI use constitute an unfair advantage, particularly when not all students have equivalent access to the tools?) and, overall, credibility (are certification results still meaningful, particularly for determining selection, if students are using AI or if there is uncertainty as to whether students are using AI?) (Table 4.4).
While countries are more able to regulate AI use in assessments conducted under strict conditions, i.e. pen and paper exams or digital exams with no internet access, this is less so the case for coursework or projects and portfolios, which are typically delivered under more open conditions and which are managed at the teacher/school level. The combination of assessment formats where it is harder to detect AI use, more open conditions, and assessment oversight/marking by individual teachers and schools creates a perfect storm for fear and anxiety about the extent to which students are using AI. It also generates similar anxiety about the extent to which there may be inconsistencies (i.e. unfairness) across students and schools.
Thus far, characterisations of the use of AI systems in assessment conditions are mostly hypothetical and based on conceptual and ideological positions.
Source: Zhai, Wibowo and Li (2024[7]), “The effects of over-reliance on AI dialogue systems on students' cognitive abilities: a systematic review” in Smart Learning Environments, Vol. 11/28, https://doi.org/10.1186/s40561-024-00316-7; Australian Government Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (2023[8]), Assessment reform for the age of artificial intelligence, https://www.teqsa.gov.au/sites/default/files/2023-09/assessment-reform-age-artificial-intelligence-discussion-paper.pdf (accessed May 2025); NCFE (2024[2]), Developing robust assessment in light of generative AI development, https://law-school.open.ac.uk/sites/law-school.open.ac.uk/files/files/OU%20NCFE%20report%20on%20GAI%20and%20assessment.pdf.
Strictly controlled, assessment conditions
Tightly controlled assessment conditions typically apply to examinations or tests (or activities with unseen items as referred to in the matrix). As such, the term ‘exam conditions’ is also often used to describe this type of assessment conditions. This category is used when the context in which students sit an assessment is managed and regulated, typically to ensure uniformity in the experience students have while undertaking the assessment and to ensure the authenticity of student work. This might include:
Time: the window of time students have to undertake the assessment may be limited, i.e. 1 hour, and the timing of the assessment may also be specified, i.e. at 10am.
Location: the place where students undertake the assessment may be specified, i.e. a school hall or classroom.
Resources: the resources students have access to may be limited or may need to be verified, i.e. a calculator, or no resources at all; when sitting assessments digitally, students may be limited to a secure digital environment.
Most upper secondary certificates mapped for this report include an assessment component undertaken in strictly controlled conditions (55 out of 71) (see Table 4.5), reflecting the share of unseen tasks which are typically exams or tests.
Notes: In Belgium (Flemish Community), Starting from the cohort of students who will take the last two years of upper secondary school (i.e. the third grade) in 2026-2027, pupils in the last year (i.e. the second year of the third grade) will sit Flemish tests.
In France, students taking the Baccalauréat who specialise in arts are required to produce during the school year a creative piece of art or portfolio in their chosen artistic field. This work supports a final practical and oral test, as part of the Baccalaureate exam. Therefore, even though the Contrôle terminal (Final assessment) is categorised as being delivered under strictly controlled examination conditions, some parts of it for students in certain specialisations are developed with less restricted conditions.
BTECs are a brand of qualifications and not a specific type of qualification. BTECs are offered by Pearson, an awarding organisation. The term BTEC is often used more broadly by students, their families and schools to refer to vocational qualifications that are taken alongside A levels. However, the mapping in this report is specific to Pearson’s ‘BTEC Nationals’.
In Greece, students in Vocational High Schools work towards both the Ptychio and the Apolytirio.
In Scotland, Vocational Qualifications include National Certificates, National Progression Awards, Higher National Certificates, Higher National Diplomas, Foundation Apprenticeships.
Source: Transitions in Upper Secondary Education Certificate and Assessment mapping exercise, data collected across 2024 and 2025.
How tightly assessment conditions are enforced may depend on who is responsible for defining them. When teachers or schools are responsible, they may allow a degree of flexibility about some of the conditions. Where the assessment is overseen by an external organisation such as an examination board, the conditions and rules are often policed using individuals or systems who are not directly connected to the school. This might mean that national exam bodies might visit a sample of schools to ensure that required conditions are met. In Scotland, schools and further education colleges must meet explicit and detailed requirements to become a centre where students can take national certificates. Sometimes, for example, in parts of India, parts of the process are literally policed, for example when examinations bodies use policy or security personnel to ensure that papers remain confidential before the examination (The Express Tribune, 2024[9]).
Validity and reliability
Tightly constrained conditions provide a number of safeguards to reassure stakeholders who are concerned about the trustworthiness and credibility of the assessment – notably tertiary education institutions. The defined conditions may play a major part in preventing corruption and ensuring greater fairness by preventing families with financial resources from being able to pay for examination questions or answers.
Examination conditions are thought to provide reassurance that the student’s own knowledge is being assessed, and in that sense can be seen as ensuring more reliable assessment. The fact that everyone is required to sit the same assessment at the same time with the same resources can be seen as a way to ensure fairness in assessment.
Associated challenges
Tightly defined assessment conditions may be viewed as reducing the validity of assessment of skills, because the context in which the skills are tested is an artificial one that bears few resemblances to any ‘real life’ or workplace contexts that the students will encounter later in their lives. The idea that such conditions create exam security may also be called into question; students, parents and those who might benefit from exam malpractice find ways to bypass security measures (for example, examiners seeking gain may offer to ‘sell’ exam questions or papers, or students may pay someone else to sit an exam on their behalf, or take unauthorised materials into the examination room, sometimes even written on their person). There are risks that systems become concerned with exam security to the exclusion of other aspects of assessment quality, or conversely, that discussions around assessment integrity take for granted that examination conditions provide foolproof security. Indeed, both positions, although seemingly contradictory, may be held by the same sets of stakeholders in some systems.2
The matrix in Chapter 2 sets out four approaches for the timing of assessments:
Timing not specified
Continuous assessment
At stages defined by an external or national authority
At the end of the programme of learning
Figure 4.2 shows the number of certificates which include at least one assessment component categorised according to when the assessment takes place. Most certificates include at least one component which takes place at the end of the programme (49 out of 71) and most certificates include assessments where the timing of assessments is defined by external or national authorities, taking place at a specified point before the end of the programme (38 out of 71).
Number of certificates by timing and scheduling settings
Note: Most certificates include multiple components.
Source: Transitions in Upper Secondary Education Certificate and Assessment mapping exercise, data collected across 2024 and 2025.
Timing not specified
In some systems, the timing of the assessment is not specified at a national or state level. In these cases, this tends to coincide with assessment tasks where the nature of the task and the conditions for taking it are not specified. However, this category is also used when there are discrete and defined assessment tasks to be delivered as a part of a programme of learning and assessment, with teachers having autonomy over the timing and scheduling. Most upper secondary certificates analysed (48 out of 71) include an assessment component where the timing is not specified at a national or state level. As seen in Table 4.6, these assessment components are often labelled as school-based or internal assessment, reflecting that schools and teachers have autonomy over when and how assessment activities are delivered and assessment judgements are made.
Notes: BTECs are a brand of qualifications and not a specific type of qualification. BTECs are offered by Pearson, an awarding organisation. The term BTEC is often used more broadly by students, their families and schools to refer to vocational qualifications that are taken alongside A levels. However, the mapping in this report is specific to Pearson’s ‘BTEC Nationals’.
In Greece, students in Vocational High Schools work towards both the Ptychio and the Apolytirio.
In Scotland, Vocational Qualifications include National Certificates, National Progression Awards, Higher National Certificates, Higher National Diplomas, Foundation Apprenticeships.
Source: Transitions in Upper Secondary Education Certificate and Assessment mapping exercise, data collected across 2024 and 2025.
Validity and reliability
Allowing schools and teachers to determine the timing of assessment can be more manageable for students and teachers and also more valid, with assessment able to be tailored around the teacher’s organisation of the curriculum programme, the class progress towards learning goals or individual student progress. This ability to tailor to local or individual needs means that learning can drive assessment rather than the other way around, as is sometimes a complaint about assessment systems with defined assessment schedules. In theory, this way of scheduling assessment is the most student-centred, and with appropriate conversations and spaces for student agency, should produce an assessment regime that is the least stressful for the student, and gives them the greatest chance to positively show what they can do, rather than experiencing assessment negatively, as revealing what they cannot do. Ultimately, this might contribute to more authentic and valid assessments of skills and knowledge by being a more accurate reflection of student achievement and competence.
Associated challenges
Whilst, in theory, scheduling assessment around learning progress provides opportunities for ‘assessment when ready’ and for student agency to be part of that decision, assessing every student when they were ready would be likely to produce manageability issues. In practice there may still be constraints on when the teacher can administer assessments, especially if these comprise centrally produced tasks. It may also result in an increase in results or grades from assessment. If the reasons for increased assessment results are not communicated clearly, stakeholders like higher education who use the results for selection decisions might perceive assessment results to be less credible.
Continuous assessment
The least common timing category for assessments in the mapping is continuous assessment which is used in 12 out of 71 certificates (Table 4.7). The term ‘continuous assessment’ may be used in some systems to convey that assessment is an ongoing activity and can happen throughout the programme of learning. When used, it typically means that teachers provide an overall grade or a holistic assessment for students, which may be based on any of their work in class, homework and even factors such as attendance and participation. For example, in Denmark and Italy, at the end of the year teachers provide an overall grade for each student in each subject based on the year’s work. This category is also used in some specific contexts such as work placements in vocational education, such as on-the-job training for the Certificado de conclusão do ensino secundário e diploma – Certificado profissional in Portugal, where students are being continually observed by an assessor to reach a judgement on the skills, knowledge and understanding they demonstrate during their placement.
Notes: In Greece, students in Vocational High Schools work towards both the Ptychio and the Apolytirio.
In Scotland, Vocational Qualifications include National Certificates, National Progression Awards, Higher National Certificates, Higher National Diplomas, Foundation Apprenticeships.
Source: Transitions in Upper Secondary Education Certificate and Assessment mapping exercise, data collected across 2024 and 2025.
Validity and reliability
With close integration of learning and assessment, continuous assessment aims to get the truest possible picture of each student’s ability, based on what it is they have been learning. Through regular assessment of students, teachers have a close understanding of student progression and capabilities, enabling reliable judgements to be made about students’ levels of performance. Assessment judgements are able to reflect all pieces of evidence about what a student knows and can do, meaning grades are a holistic reflection of students’ skills, rather than a representation of students’ skills as demonstrated on a particular day or in response to a particular assessment task.
Associated challenges
When continuous assessment is fully devolved to teachers – both in terms of timing but also in terms of the construction of assessment tasks or how teachers form judgements from student evidence – there is the greatest scope for variability across schools. Students may also have less visibility over how their learning activities and behaviours – their schoolwork, their homework, their performance and classroom engagement – on any given day, informs their grades.
Scheduled by an external or national authority
Assessments may be scheduled by an external or national authority before the end of the learning programme in order to break up the assessment burden students experience at the end of the programme, to assess some topics or modules ahead of others or to incentivise student learning and engagement throughout the duration of the learning programme. Over half of the certificates analysed (38 out of 71) include an assessment component which, although not taking place at the end of the programme, takes place at a set point in time as scheduled centrally (Table 4.8).
Notes: In Belgium (Flemish Community), Starting from the cohort of students who will take the last two years of upper secondary school (i.e. the third grade) in 2026-2027, pupils in the last year (i.e. the second year of the third grade) will sit Flemish tests.
BTECs are a brand of qualifications and not a specific type of qualification. BTECs are offered by Pearson, an awarding organisation. The term BTEC is often used more broadly by students, their families and schools to refer to vocational qualifications that are taken alongside A levels. However, the mapping in this report is specific to Pearson’s ‘BTEC Nationals’.
In Scotland, Vocational Qualifications include National Certificates, National Progression Awards, Higher National Certificates, Higher National Diplomas, Foundation Apprenticeships.
Source: Transitions in Upper Secondary Education Certificate and Assessment mapping exercise, data collected across 2024 and 2025.
Where there is an interim examination, then this can be considered to be a staged assessment, taking place at defined points in the course (for example, perhaps midway through a two-year course). Some systems go beyond adding an interim assessment and involve a number of assessments taken at the end of defined sequences of learning (usually a topic or separate skills development area) throughout the course; this sort of arrangement is often associated with modularised or unitised systems. Assessment at these defined stages may yield a formally recorded and reported assessment result or may be fed into a longer term and larger process.
Validity and reliability
This type of assessment schedule removes the criticism that a high-stakes assessment result depends only on one task or piece of evidence (or, in the case of assessment in examination conditions, ‘on the day’). Introducing interim or staged assessments can remove the perception that assessment and certification operate on an ‘all or nothing’ basis, that is perceived as unfair by students and ultimately not a relevant assessment of the way in which skills and knowledge are used in real life. For domains of learning that naturally split into different sub-domains or topics, such as for maths or science, and where these do not necessarily build on each other in an integrated way, it may be fairer to assess at a point in the learning programme that is closer to when the learning took place (Baird, 2019[10]).
Associated challenges
Interim or staged assessment does not suit every curricular area or domain of learning. For example, in native and foreign languages, where learning activities provide the student with opportunities to practise and develop greater depth and complexity of skill, then it may be difficult to assess at earlier points in the programme. Or if earlier assessments occur, what is assessed may need to be at a lower level of demand than the eventual level the student is expected to reach. When the latter arises, this can mean that staged or interim assessments may affect the credibility of the assessment and certification.
Manageability may also be an issue (or perceived issue), with students ending the course feeling that they have been assessed constantly and spent a lot of time on assessment. On the other hand, splitting assessment across more than one occasion may facilitate curricular coverage while ensuring that each individual assessment is manageable to schedule, implement and carry out (for the student, assessor and other system actors).
At the end of the programme of learning
Traditional, exam-based assessment tends to happen at the end of the course of learning, and many systems will have a tradition in which all students sit examinations during one or two months at the end of the academic year. Across the certificates mapped, the majority (49 out of 71) include a component, such as a final exam, which takes place at the end of the learning programme. As can be seen in Table 4.9, these assessment components are frequently labelled as external exams, final exams or matriculation exams.
Notes: In France, students taking the Baccalauréat who specialise in arts are required to produce during the school year a creative piece of art or portfolio in their chosen artistic field. This work supports a final practical and oral test, as part of the Baccalaureate exam. Therefore, even though the Contrôle terminal (Final assessment) is categorised as being delivered under at the end of the learning programme, some parts of it for students in certain specialisations are developed earlier in the programme.
In Scotland, Vocational Qualifications include National Certificates, National Progression Awards, Higher National Certificates, Higher National Diplomas, Foundation Apprenticeships.
Source: Transitions in Upper Secondary Education Certificate and Assessment mapping exercise, data collected across 2024 and 2025.
Validity and reliability
End-point assessment is typically used when the assessment system is concerned with evaluating the student’s ability to retain, and sometimes to integrate, a body of knowledge, understanding and skills. In some systems, this might be called a ‘synoptic’ assessment or a ‘capstone’ assessment, especially in vocational education. For example, in Portugal, for students in the professional programme, the Professional Aptitude Test (final project) acts as an assessment of all the knowledge, skills, attitudes and professional skills students had developed over the course of the programme (Annex 4.A). For the student, it can be an advantage that they have had the whole learning programme to develop their skills, and they may view this as fairer and a more relevant assessment of skills and knowledge as used in everyday life.
Associated challenges
In some subjects such as mathematics or sciences, students may cover a topic or area early on in the course and not need to use or revisit it in later parts of the learning programme. In those instances, the assessment may be viewed as assessing recall rather than more complex skills. In subjects that are made up of a number of inter-related domains of learning, it may be difficult for a single end-point assessment to capture all of the required skills and knowledge. Such assessments may be split into separate parts, risking manageability and fairness by creating a heavy assessment load at the end of the student’s programme of learning.
Table 4.10 provides illustrative considerations of the merits and challenges of different conditions and timing for assessments. This is, by necessity, a simplification of the implications and challenges of different approaches to assessment, and the challenges discussed may be able to be mitigated through clever assessment design. This table, however, captures the implications and challenges that are commonly observed.
References
[8] Australian Government Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (2023), Assessment reform for the age of artificial intelligence, https://www.teqsa.gov.au/sites/default/files/2023-09/assessment-reform-age-artificial-intelligence-discussion-paper.pdf (accessed on May 2025).
[10] Baird, J. (2019), “Examination Reform: Impact of Linear and Modular Examinations at GCSE, Summary Report”.
[6] Joint Council for Qualifications (2025), AI use in Assessments, https://www.jcq.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AI-Use-in-Assessments_Apr25_FINAL.pdf (accessed on 18 May 2025).
[12] Kellaghan, T. and V. Greaney (2020), Public Examinations Examined, World Bank, https://doi.org/10.1596/978-1-4648-1418-1.
[2] NCFE (2024), Developing robust assessment in light of generative AI development, The Open University, https://law-school.open.ac.uk/sites/law-school.open.ac.uk/files/files/OU%20NCFE%20report%20on%20GAI%20and%20assessment.pdf (accessed on May 2025).
[5] New Zealand Qualifications Authority (2025), Assessment Specifications Level 3 Visual Arts 2025, https://www.nzqa.govt.nz/nqfdocs/ncea-resource/specifications/2025/91457-spc-2025.pdf (accessed on 10 November 2025).
[3] Ofqual (2024), Ofqual’s approach to regulating the use of artificial intelligence in the qualifications sector, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ofquals-approach-to-regulating-the-use-of-artificial-intelligence-in-the-qualifications-sector/ofquals-approach-to-regulating-the-use-of-artificial-intelligence-in-the-qualifications-sector (accessed on May 2025).
[1] Opposs, D. (2016), “Whatever happened to school-based assessment in England’s GCSEs and A levels?”, Perspectives in Education, Vol. 34/4, pp. 52-61.
[11] Scottish Qualifications Authority (2025), Higher English Course Specification, https://www.sqa.org.uk/files_ccc/h-course-spec-english.pdf (accessed on 10 November 2025).
[4] Scottish Qualifications Authority (2024), Generative artificial intelligence (AI) in assessment, https://www.sqa.org.uk/sqa/107507.html (accessed on May 2025).
[13] SQA (2025), Guide to Assessment, https://www.sqa.org.uk/files_ccc/Guide_To_Assessment.pdf (accessed on 21 July 2025).
[9] The Express Tribune (2024), Inter board tries to avoid lapses of matric exams, https://tribune.com.pk/story/2469250/inter-board-tries-to-avoid-lapses-of-matric-exams (accessed on 24 February 2025).
[7] Zhai, C., S. Wibowo and L. Li (2024), “The effects of over-reliance on AI dialogue systems on students’ cognitive abilities: a systematic review”, Smart Learning Environments, Vol. 11/28, https://doi.org/10.1186/s40561-024-00316-7.
Open assessment conditions for vocational qualifications
In Scotland, vocational qualifications include ‘units’, with students needing to complete units in order to achieve the certificate. Within these units, outcomes are specified. To complete the units, students need to meet the performance criteria of the unit’s outcomes. Different units specify different assessment conditions, and this can include assessments where the conditions are considered to be ‘open’. For example, the National Progression Award for ‘Creative and Digital Media: Technologies, Processes and Practices’ includes four mandatory units:
Creative Industries: An Introduction – Scotland
Creative Industries: Understanding a Creative Brief
Media: Understanding the Creative Process
Storytelling for the Creative Industries.
To complete the first unit, Creative Industries: An Introduction – Scotland, students need to achieve three outcomes:
1. Investigate the Creative Industries in the United Kingdom
2. Investigate employment within a chosen sector of the Creative Industries
3. Review and evaluate own employability skills.
The performance criteria of the third outcome, for example, requires students to:
Identify own strengths and areas for improvement in specified employability skills
Seek feedback from others when reviewing specified employability skills
Set targets for improvement in specific employability skills
Evaluate progress in achieving these targets over a set period of time.
The unit specifies that written and/or oral evidence is required to demonstrate students are meeting the outcomes and performance criteria. This evidence is to be gathered in open-book conditions at appropriate points throughout the unit. For the first two outcomes, there is flexibility for assessment to be carried out in the context of an individual, group or class event i.e. students presenting a written report or a video diary to a small group or to the whole class.
For outcome 3, ‘review and evaluate own employability skills’, students are asked to complete three reviews, at the beginning, middle and end of the unit. Within these reviews, students record their own strengths and weaknesses, feedback gathered from others, targets set and areas identified for improvement and an evaluation of progress. These reviews are completed in supervised open-book conditions. To ensure authenticity of student work, students are asked to sign and date each of their reviews, which are then countersigned by the assessor.
Creative Experiential Activities
In Korea, upper secondary education includes ‘Creative Experiential Activities’ alongside subject learning. Creative Experiential Activities aims to support students to develop skills such as:
Creative thinking and problem-solving to generate new ideas by link knowledge, skills, and experiences from across diverse disciplines, and
Collaborative communication to enable students to achieve common goals in a cooperative partnership by effectively conveying their own personal thoughts and emotions while respecting and listening to others’ perspectives.
To get the requisite credits for graduation, students are expected to spend at least 288 hours dedicated to Creative Experiential Activities over the three years of upper secondary education. Schools then award students’ credits once they have met the requirements for completing Creative Experiential Activities.
Schools have the autonomy to determine what the primary focus of the Creative Experiential Activities will be, by considering their own local school context and students’ characteristics in order to provide diverse experiences related to students’ career and aptitudes. This can include activities like school clubs, career education and activities providing students with academic and social preparation ahead of transitions to higher education and employment. Creative Experiential Activities can be delivered as out-of-school education in partnership with community organisations, depending on the needs of students.
Cross-curricular themes are expected to be incorporated into Creative Experiential Activities, as well as subject learning, and should be delivered in collaboration with families and local communities. Cross-curricular themes include Health and Safety, Career Education, Human Rights Education, Financial Education and Environmental and Sustainable Development Education.
Due to the wide range of ways in which Creative Experiential Activities can be delivered, and with the main assessment requirement being time-based, i.e. students participate in at least 288 hours of dedicated activities, there is no specific evidence that needs to be gathered. Since this is not a traditional assessment, as such, there are no assessment conditions or constraints that need to be applied when students are participating in the Creative Experiential Activities. All that matters is that students participate in the hours to fulfil the requirements to be awarded the necessary credits for graduation.
Ensuring authenticity of student work through mixed conditions
In Scotland, United Kingdom, a key part of the Higher English course is a portfolio-writing assessment, worth 30% of the overall grade for the course assessment (Scottish Qualifications Authority, 2025[11]). The assessment specification notes that most of the writing process requires candidates to work independently, but the teacher or lecturer can support students to choose the focus and genre of the piece of writing. Students must complete the first draft of the piece of writing in class under supervision. The period allocated to the first draft may last up to four hours, and this may take place over several sessions. While doing their first draft, students can have access to appropriate resources, such as notes, an outline, research and digital technologies. Teachers must put in place processes for monitoring progress to ensure that the final work is the student’s own, and that plagiarism has not taken place.
This is an example of assessment which is conducted under some supervision and control, as the first draft is completed in class. This level of supervision and control ensures that:
Students do not need to be directly supervised at all times
The use of resources, including the internet, is not tightly prescribed
Teachers have confidence the final work submitted by individual students is their own
Teachers can provide reasonable assistance to students.
The Professional Aptitude Test (final project)
In Portugal, students working towards the Certificado de conclusão do ensino secundário e diploma – Certificado profissional are assessed in three ways:
Internal coursework
On-the-job training
Professional Aptitude Test (final project).
At the end of the final learning year, students present their final project dissertation-style with a defence to an assessing council/committee. This council/committee includes schools staff as well as external stakeholders, such as respected figures from the wider community, vocational training or course-related sectors, further and higher education providers etc. As a final project, this is intended to assess student’s capacity to use all the knowledge, skills, attitudes and professional skills acquired on the course.
← 1. Although strategies can be put in place to mitigate this risk. See, for example, advice to assessors on ensuring validity in SQA’s Guide to Assessment, (2025[13]), from page 9 onwards, https://www.sqa.org.uk/files_ccc/Guide_To_Assessment.pdf.
← 2. For a full discussion of potential examination malpractice and attitudes to it, see Kellaghan, T., Greaney, V. (2020[12]), “Chapter 11: the Integrity of Public Examinations and Malpractice”, pp 217-238, in Public examinations examined, Washington, DC: World Bank, https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/208231572358210940/pdf/Public-Examinations-Examined.pdf.