There is a new frontier emerging in professional and educational assessment. And for once it has little to do with artificial intelligence.
It is a crisis in candidate experience (CX). For too many, the experience of being assessed is one of anxiety and uncertainty. Despite genuine progress, assessment design does not always reflect the full diversity of those sitting it, and that is a missed opportunity for everyone involved.
Digital assessment can deliver equity without expense
Let’s start with the basics. Well-designed digital assessment tools, such as RM Ava, can help level an otherwise uneven playing field. Features such as text-to-speech support, dyslexia-friendly fonts and flexible time provision are not luxuries. They are sound design principles. When a candidate can hear a question read aloud or read it in a font that reduces visual stress, they are not receiving an unfair advantage. They are just getting the same chance as everyone else. Technology makes this scalable, and it does not need to be prohibitively expensive. The question is whether awarding bodies are aware of quite how achievable it has become.
At its best, assessment should be a showcase for talent. When a qualification relies on a narrow range of task types, it may not always capture the full extent of a candidate's capability. Employers who rely solely on such credentials risk overlooking talented individuals, which is a loss for organisations as much as for candidates. Offering a wider variety of assessment formats, where appropriate, gives everyone a better chance to demonstrate what they actually know and can do.
The factors driving a timely discussion
Recent comments by the head of Ofqual on AI use in non-examined assessments have prompted legitimate debate. If coursework and portfolios can be AI-generated, how valuable are they as evidence of learning? It is a reasonable question. But we must resist any drift back towards treating the timed, closed-book examination as the only credible form of assessment. High-stakes examinations under rigid conditions have their place, but they cannot be the whole answer, and relying on them too heavily risks reducing accessibility rather than widening it.
The UK Solicitor’s Qualifying Examination data reinforces this point. Declining pass rates and persistent disparities linked to ethnicity and socioeconomic background need attention. It is encouraging that some training providers are calling for candidate experience factors such as the format, pace and length of assessments to be included in the ongoing review. They are right to do so.
And here is where we say the quiet bit out loud. At a time when DEI and EDI initiatives face resistance in some quarters, the assessment sector must hold its nerve. Diversity, equity and inclusion are not ideological whims. They are the conditions under which talent is fairly recognised. To retreat from them in assessment design is to quietly skew outcomes, however unintentionally.
The candidate must be at the centre. Not as an afterthought, but right from the start.
