Making sure that a new exam is a thorough and fair test is a complicated and multi-faceted process, requiring careful research, checking and trial. Some of the world’s leading experts in language assessment contribute to the work of Cambridge English, and the quality of our exams is built on their combined expertise.
New exams have to go through a rigorous series of processes including:
- commissioning the exam – where the scope and time frame for the new exam is decided
- pre-editing – checking that the material written by the exam question writers meets the specification
- editing – ensuring the quality and accuracy of the test content
- pretesting/trialling – trying out the test content to ensure that it tests candidates in the way expected
- pretest/trial review – checking the results of the pretesting and trials to see if further editing is needed
- test construction – test content is assembled into test versions and checked to ensure the level and focus are correct and test security is maintained
- overview – a final critical review of the whole process before the test specification is finalised and more test content produced.
Our quality management system is certificated to the ISO 9001:2015 standard.
We only launch a new exam when we are completely satisfied that the test has passed all of these stages.
Pretesting is a vital element in the Cambridge English examination development process. Trialling exam materials helps ensure our exams are accurate and fair, and that the content is appropriate. Find out more
For a test to be fair and accurate, everyone who takes it has to have the same opportunity to succeed.
To guarantee our tests are fair, we have a number of important security measures in place to ensure that exams safely distributed to the thousands of exam centres around the world where our tests take place.
Exam papers are delivered to test centres by a number of secure methods – many are accessed via computer in the test centre, some receive physical question papers by secure post, and in some countries they are sent to a courier for delivery only on the day of the test.
Physical question papers may need to be stored for brief periods of time before the exam, as do the completed exam scripts before they are marked. All exam centres are required to have secure storage facilities and are inspected regularly to ensure they meet our strict criteria for security.
Quality is a process which begins with the research and design of tests and ends with an accurate assessment of each candidate’s entry.
The assessment of a candidate’s work has to be as consistent and reliable as every other aspect of the examination process. For this reason all of our exams (except IELTS) are marked by trained and certified Cambridge examiners on Cambridge systems and platforms.
When we receive the completed written papers they are randomly allocated for marking – this ensures that, regardless of where they have come from, all papers are marked fairly.
The examiners who mark the tests are themselves subject to strict monitoring of their performance to ensure that their marking is accurate and consistent.
Speaking tests (with the exception of IELTS) use two assessors to ensure accuracy. We record and sample Speaking tests for subsequent monitoring.
Some of our computer-based tests, such as Linguaskill, are able to give an instant assessment, which is of great value to those who are testing large numbers of people for educational or recruitment purposes.
It is essential to the quality of our exams, the accuracy and fairness of results and the continued reputation of Cambridge English, that each candidate experiences a test that consistently meets the high standards we set.
To achieve this, we have dedicated research teams. The work they do in validating our exams – ensuring their quality, fairness and relevance – is vital.
We work closely with leading specialists in the following disciplines:
- testing and assessment
- statistical analysis and item-banking
- applied linguistics
- corpus linguistics
- language learning/pedagogy.
Together they carry out a variety of research activity for all of our exams.
We regularly give presentations to conferences, submit papers to leading academic journals, and also publish research findings in our own publications: