Formative assessment through technology

Give teachers and learners the information they need to improve

Formative assessment is a key part of effective learning.

When teachers understand what learners know and can do, they can adapt teaching more quickly and more precisely. When learners understand their own strengths and weaknesses, they are better able to focus their effort and make progress.

Governments can harness the benefits of technology to deliver high quality formative assessment on a national scale.

Why use technology enabled formative assessment?

Technology can strengthen formative assessment by:

Providing clearer insight: Digital assessments can capture more precise information about learner performance across a wide ability range.
Delivering timely feedback: Dynamic and instant reporting gives learners and teachers rapid, purposeful feedback to act on while it is still relevant.
Reducing workload: Streamlined delivery, auto-marking and reporting reduce administrative burden for teachers.
Supporting inclusion: Digital delivery can include accessibility features and flexible models to support diverse learner needs.
Informing system level decisions: Aggregated reporting across schools or regions can help monitor progress and evaluate the impact of policy and curriculum changes.

Over 6 million assessments delivered

Winner of the e-Assessment Association’s award for Best Use of Formative Assessment

Over 60,000 teachers have the data they need to inform teaching and learning

Why work with AQA Global?

AQA Global works with governments and awarding organisations around the world to design and deliver technology enabled formative assessment that supports improvement in teaching and learning.

We work with national governments to deliver world class adaptive assessments. No UK organisation has more experience of adaptive on-screen assessment delivery.

How can we help you?

We offer a range of tailored services to develop a bespoke assessment to suit your needs.

These are just some examples of the services we provide.

Assessment strategy and design: Develop a bespoke solution, underpinned by research and tailored to your national context and policy aims.

Our research team will work closely with you to:
Advise on the strategic use of technology-enabled formative assessment to meet your specific requirements
Translate international best practice into locally appropriate policy solutions
Support stakeholder engagement, including briefings for senior policymakers and technical committees
Support evidence-based policy design through feasibility studies, pilots, and impact evaluations
Assessment development: Create a world-class assessment aligned with national curriculum and international best practice
Our team of assessment experts will:
Develop test specifications aligned with national curricula
Specify accessibility, inclusion, and language requirements for diverse learner populations
Design pilots to ensure that the content delivers on the intended purpose
Technology and delivery models: Deliver secure, scalable adaptive assessment technology tailored to national infrastructure and system needs
Our bespoke solution is platform agnostic – we work with a range of technology providers, depending on the needs of the project. Our technology team will:
Provide vendor-neutral advice to support selection of a suitable assessment platform aligned to your requirements
Support integration with existing education management information systems (EMIS) and digital learning platforms
Advise on delivery models, including online, low-bandwidth, tablet-based, and offline solutions
Support data security, privacy, hosting and compliance with national and international standards
Stress-test platforms for scale, reliability, and operational resilience
Item banking and content management: Create and maintain a pool of high-quality items that power formative assessment at scale.
Using our pool of subject specialists, we produce items for all subjects and all age groups. We will:
Train authors on the specific requirements of your assessments
Develop high-quality assessment items tailored for adaptive delivery at scale
Ensure items are culturally appropriate, curriculum-aligned, and accessible
Monitor item exposure, usage, and performance over time using psychometric analysis of results
Psychometrics and data integrity: Ensure the technical integrity of adaptive assessments through robust psychometric design and analysis.
Robust assessments are underpinned by strong psychometric data. Our team of psychometricians and statisticians will:
Identify the best statistical model to use and how to tailor our adaptive algorithm to suit your needs
Use psychometric models such as Item Response Theory (IRT) to support item calibration
Ensure validity, reliability and fairness of the assessments using tools such as differential item functional (DIF) analysis
Reporting and insight: Give learners, teachers and school leaders the information they need to inform teaching practice and school policy
Formative assessments are only as valuable as the insights they produce. We will:
Design learner-, teacher-, school-, and system-level reports tailored to formative use
Create clear, actionable insights to inform teaching and learning
Develop dashboards for school leaders, regional and ministry officials to monitor data
Implementation and school support: Support teachers and learners to use the assessments confidently and effectively.
We provide advice and guidance on how to:
Operate a service desk to offer guidance to teachers, learners and parents
Create and host an assessment portal for users to access assessments and reports
Train teachers and school leaders on how best to use the insights
Provide technical support to assessment users

Adaptive testing in action

Working with AQA's specialist in standards and assessment, the Welsh government have introduced new online national assessments for school children aged 7 to 14 in Wales.

Learn more about these online national assessments taken by around 270,000 learners every year.

Read the case study