01 Oct 2024
Today, Cambridge announced the launch of digital examinations across six subjects in June 2026. Students at schools in Europe, Middle East and North Africa and the US will have the opportunity first to take the Cambridge International AS English General Paper and multiple choice questions in Cambridge IGCSE Accounting, Economics, Biology, Chemistry and Physics on laptops. These exams will meet the same validity, reliability and comparability standards as Cambridge’s paper-based exams and mark the start of our global rollout of digital exams across full Cambridge IGCSE, International AS & A Level curricula.
We are now inviting schools in some regions to enrol for this first phase of the digital rollout. They will participate in an Early Adopter Programme which gives them exclusive access to our innovative digital examination platform. Through the programme, schools and students will take part in digital mock tests, familiarisation sessions, and testing of new platform functionalities and support materials to enhance the user experience. We will gather feedback from participating schools to help refine and enhance our digital platform.
A new era of digital examinations
Our digital approach is education-led, so that examinations prove and improve learning. As such, we will use technology to improve accessibility, relevance and – ultimately – learning. Our transition to digital exams will take two forms:
- Migratory. The digital exams scheduled for June 2026 will be a migration of existing paper-based exams to digital formats with minimal change to curricula, type of assessment, or teaching methods.
- Transformational. We are developing new curricula and forms of examination to deliver assessment in a way that has not been possible on paper. Assessments will be redesigned to support authentic teaching and learning aligned to higher education and workplace skills, based on a competency-based curriculum that harnesses collaboration, online research, data and communication skills, for example.
We are drawing on feedback from our school community, on our research, and our examinations expertise to determine which approach to use for each of our qualifications. By 2033, 85% of Cambridge’s high-stakes qualifications will have a digital option.
Rod Smith, Group Managing Director for International Education at Cambridge, said: 'Our world has become digitised, and education is no exception. Cambridge International Education provides qualifications to nearly one million students globally every year. Drawing on insights from this community, we have an unrivalled depth of research that will allow us to deliver the optimal form of digital exams to support and assess learning.'
Digital Mocks Service
Beyond the Early Adopter Programme, Cambridge schools have the opportunity to participate in our Digital Mocks Service which is now open for Expressions of Interest for digital mocks from January to March 2025. This service not only helps schools prepare operationally for digital exams of the future, but also returns mock exam results both auto marked and marked by Cambridge examiners so that teachers and learners get detailed results showing each student’s marks, informing them where to focus revision. Since the launch of our Digital Mocks Service in 2023, students in 31 countries have taken our digital mock exams in 16 subjects across Cambridge IGCSE and Cambridge International AS & A Level.