Password at-home English language test launches globally

In 2022, it announced a partnership with Examity to deliver the Password Skills Plus test.

After investing in compliance and IT teams, and allowing staff the time and tools to review each test taken, the worldwide launch is ready, founder and CEO, Caroline Browne, told The PIE.

“We have executed our plan to roll the test out slowly during its first 12 to 18 months as we wanted to completely understand the ‘at-home’ test environment and the various test taker behaviours (both good and bad) in these conditions in detail before scaling up,” she said.

Scandals and fraud have impacted testing providers over the past decade.

“Organised fraud, systematic cheating and differing cultural attitudes to test taker behaviour do create major problems for universities each year when students who have engaged in academic misconduct are enrolled with insufficient language ability to successfully engage in their studies,” Browne said.

“In order to ensure accurate, reliable and credible test results, academic misconduct does need to be systematically spotted and dealt with. However, this needs to be done in such as way as to ensure innocent test takers are not unfairly penalised at any point.”

The Password Skills Plus test was developed to deter, detect and disqualify test taker cheating, she continued.

“Our approach to at home testing starts with the understanding (gained from over 15 years of running online English language tests) that most test takers are honest.”

A three stage work flow has been devised to identify cheating, including investigations prior to the test sessions, human proctoring during tests and analysis after the exam.

“Our approach to at home testing starts with the understanding that most test takers are honest”

Some 80 HEIs (mainly in the UK and Cyprus) of the company’s 1000+ partners globally, are already using the Password Skills Plus test.

The company works with Meazure Learning as its proctoring partner, which invigilates during tests and reviews videos, using both humans and AI, before Password compliance teams reevaluates them again.

The behaviour of test takers will change during exams, as many will begin nervously before growing in confidence or not, depending on their English language level, Browne added.

“This all needs to be understood as analysing test taker behaviour plays such an important part in detecting academic misconduct.”

The company’s validation portal will allow universities to view and verify test certificates.

“Our mission is to ensure that each and every test result is a true reflection of the test taker’s ability on the day they were assessed so that Password Skills Plus test results always meet the stringent requirements of high stakes university admissions.”