Alex Scharaschkin is executive director of assessment research and innovation at AQA, formerly the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance. AQA is a registered charity, independent of government, and is one of four major awarding bodies for school examinations in England.
Scharaschkin is responsible for setting and maintaining standards in AQA’s qualifications, as well as their programme of assessment research, and for overseeing assessment innovation including the use of digital technologies. He previously led the National Audit Office’s work in Parliament and has published academic papers in education journals.
He sat down to discuss his work at AQA and the future of exams and education.
How does working at an exam board compare with working at the National Audit Office?
In some respects they’re quite similar. Both organisations are concerned with questions of assessment – about asking whether something is good, about judging things using the evidence. Of course the two organisations are making judgements on different things. At the National Audit Office (NAO) we were assessing government policy and its effectiveness, assessing its value for money. But at AQA we’re managing an assessment of learners, and whether they’ve met certain standards on their education journeys. And that’s about signalling to prospective universities or other schools or employers exactly what they can expect from individual learners. We issued around four million certificates to students last year – that’s a huge challenge which we rise to every summer. But doing it fairly, consistently and accurately is something we’re absolutely committed to.
I’d say, too, that both AQA and the NAO are fully integrated into the public realm – AQA is an independent charity, but we’re serving a broad public agenda, we’re not for-profit, and of course we have strong relationships with government, schools, teachers’ representatives and so on.
Is AQA disappointed that students are still sitting pen and paper exams – surely in this day and age digital exams should be the default?
Those kinds of digital exams will come in the near future, but only where it’s appropriate. I don’t think all of the assessment for everything you do at GCSE or A-level should be done on a computer. If you’re doing art or music, for example, obviously, or if you’re looking for people to show their working in complex maths sums, then the digital route isn’t ideal – traditional pen and paper is the best way of doing things here even in 2025.
But at the same time, if you think of English or history, or other subjects which require long, essay-style written responses, perhaps a digitally based keyboard or a laptop-style device makes the most sense nowadays. Or another really obvious example is computer science, which includes learning about coding. It’s much harder to assess that on paper than it is to replicate digitally in an exam environment. And so I think that we’ll see the conversion to those methods in the shorter and more medium term.
If you were told that, at short notice, you could have a five-minute phone call with the education secretary, what would you say?
I’d talk about the curriculum and assessment review, which is under way at the moment. I’d tell her that the right approach is evolution, not revolution. We do need some changes but I do think throwing out the whole thing would be a mistake. But there’s no doubt the curriculum is a little overloaded. I think it could be slimmed down in areas, perhaps. When you look at what a student does in the round there are questions around what’s important in a subject, how far into detail you go in each subject separately.
We focus obviously on academic subjects, but there needs to be space for creativity and learning the importance of project-based learning, like the extended project qualification. These kinds of skills-based approaches can set people up really well for future working life, and they’re often very well-regarded by universities as well as employers.
Another area we think is important is financial literacy. Numeracy is one thing, but I think it’s important to link numeracy to real-life situations like comparing financial products, or calculating compound interest.
How is artificial intelligence going to change education and exams? And is AI over-hyped?
If it’s possible then I think both things are true: it’s over-hyped to an extent, in some respects; but it’ll also change education and exams as well. Large language models are mirroring back human intelligence rather than “thinking” themselves in a sense. I think these kinds of tools could be time-saving – it could certainly help marking, but not by marking all exam papers from start to finish. I can envisage a system whereby every result will be decided by a human judgement, but the human judges could be helped to better spend their time by using AI-based tools which can analyse and interpret vast quantities of data very quickly, perhaps telling our expert markers where to most effectively spend their time, or to enhance quality assurance drawing on AI-based predicted scores, used wisely, in a “human in the loop” arrangement.
In a classroom setting there’s AI potential for tailored learning, using digital tools to adjust learner experiences and make them quite personalised according to their level, their knowledge, and their interests. That can potentially be done by a large language model-type technology far more quickly in a way you could never expect of an individual, human teacher in a classroom.
What are your hopes and plans for 2025? Where do you see AQA in 2030?
AQA is the largest exam board and my hopes and plans for this year relate to our summer exams. Our core value is to aim to never let a learner down. The amount of work and care that goes into exam marking and grading, within our big system with millions of grades generated, there’s a really big, prevailing sense that behind each of these numbers is a student whose life is affected by them. So my work this year will be the same as it is every year: to make sure we continue to stick to our values and continue to operate reliably and effectively as the country’s largest consistent, fair and accurate examining board.
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