In the letter, the consortium said the plans for remote English testing were “incompatible” with the home secretary’s objective of improving the security, quality and integrity of the exams – and would open up “new and significant security vulnerabilities for the country”.<\/p>\n
“Given the importance of secure English language testing for the UK’s immigration system and the protection of our borders, we cannot endorse the proposed approach by bidding for this tender while retaining our commitment to responsible, trusted and secure assessment,” it said.<\/p>\n
“A ‘fully remote’ approach exposes the UK’s immigration system to weaker security and creates more opportunities for malpractice. <\/p>\n
“We know that remote exams face cheating on an order of magnitude greater than in-person assessments.”<\/p>\n
The letter said applicants could cheat in a variety of ways, including using impersonators, working with an accomplice via screen\u2013sharing or earpieces, or getting help from AI chatbots.<\/p>\n
The letter added that the current system would not allow test providers to act without “sufficient security and consistency”.<\/p>\n
“This is particularly important, given the politically charged nature of the debate around migration and the need for more, not less, control and certainty over who is allowed to come to the UK.”<\/p>\n
Last August, the Australian government banned remote or at-home tests to assess the language competency of migrants.<\/p>\n
The Home Office said the tender for the new exam system had canvassed the market to understand what capabilities was available to meet the highest standards of security – including the risk of fraud.<\/p>\n
“Secure English Language Testing is a fundamental part of the UK’s immigration system,” said a spokesman. <\/p>\n
“We are still in the process of securing a test provider who will meet the highest thresholds of data security and fraud prevention.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the letter, the consortium said the plans for remote English testing were “incompatible” with the home secretary’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":480131,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-480130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/480131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}