Policy Exchange report urges immediate ban on unsupervised online exams
Policy Exchange found 78% of UK universities use online remote exams and urges the OfS and QAA to end unsupervised ones immediately.
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UK universities should stop using unsupervised online exams at once, and the Office for Students and the Quality Assurance Agency should instruct them to do so, according to a report published by Policy Exchange on 17 August 2026. “Evidence of Learning Through Assessment: Protecting the Value of a Degree in the Age of AI”, written by Professor Philip M. Newton of Swansea University Medical School, argues that summative remote online exams sat without invigilation “completely, and obviously, fail” the Office for Students condition B4 on assessment quality, and that regulators have not investigated their continued use.
The report draws on Freedom of Information data showing that 78 per cent of UK universities used online remote exams for summative assessment in 2023-24, while only about one in ten invigilated all of them.
What the Freedom of Information data shows
The underlying study is by Newton and Michael J. Draper, published in Quality in Higher Education. Requests went to 133 UK universities on 11 June 2024, using contact details from a publicly licensed Freedom of Information directory. Within four months, 123 institutions responded, of which three refused on cost or privacy grounds, leaving 120 that supplied some form of usable answer. Bases differ from question to question because not every university answered every item. The Policy Exchange report describes the result as “FOI results from 120 UK universities”, and several press accounts have restated this as requests sent to 120 universities, which is not what the study reports.
| Finding | Figure | Base |
|---|---|---|
| Used online remote exams for summative assessment in 2023-24 | 93 of 119 (78.2%) | 119 universities answering |
| Invigilated all such exams online | 9 of 89 (10.1%) | 89 universities answering |
| Invigilated none of them | 61 of 89 (68.5%) | 89 universities answering |
| No plans to reduce the number | 47 of 67 (70.1%) | 67 universities supplying data |
| Supplied policies not mentioning generative AI | 40 of 60 (66.7%) | 60 policies supplied |
Source: Newton and Draper, Quality in Higher Education, 2025, as summarised in Policy Exchange, “Evidence of Learning Through Assessment”, 17 August 2026.
No university told the researchers it planned to increase the number of these exams. Thirteen of the 67 planned a reduction, and two of those planned to remove them entirely. Sixty-eight universities also reported exam counts, totalling 16,744 unproctored online exams in 2023-24, a partial sector figure rather than a UK total. The study notes a methodological limit that shapes every number above: no definition of “examination” was supplied to universities, because the Quality Assurance Agency glossary contains none.
The student-side evidence comes from a separate survey
The report pairs the institutional data with a survey of what students actually sit. That survey, published in Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, polled 1,484 UK undergraduates in year two or above, recruited through the paid research panel Prolific and benchmarked against Higher Education Statistics Agency data. It found 91.1 per cent had been assessed using written coursework such as essays, and 54.6 per cent using unsupervised online examinations. Among students reporting the latter, such exams accounted for an average of 50.5 per cent of their degree.
The same survey used a list experiment, a technique that lets respondents report a sensitive behaviour anonymously. Under direct questioning 8.87 per cent admitted cheating with generative AI; the indirect estimate was 21.9 per cent, rising to 26.4 per cent among students who reported using generative AI tools. The report calculates that even the lower estimate would represent roughly 100,000 non-first-year UK undergraduates. Separately, it cites Higher Education Policy Institute survey work putting student use of AI in assessments at 88 per cent in December 2024 and 94 per cent in December 2025.
These figures come from a survey panel rather than from universities, and the report presents them as such. The distinction matters, because the 78 per cent and the 91 per cent are often quoted together as though both came from the Freedom of Information exercise.
What the report asks regulators to do
The report sets out six recommendations. The first is the one that drew coverage: end unsupervised online exams immediately through regulatory instruction. Newton writes that this “can only happen through regulatory intervention”, and that the Office for Students and the Quality Assurance Agency, or the bodies that fund or commission them, should set “a very short timeline” to end their use. He adds that “similar action needs to be taken about take-home written essays, although this is more complex due to their ubiquitous heavy use”.
| Recommendation | Core ask |
|---|---|
| 1. Cease unsupervised online exams | OfS and QAA to declare them non-compliant with quality assurance requirements |
| 2. Adopt robust assessment methods | Face-to-face assessment as the norm, in person or online, enacted within two years |
| 3. Train staff as qualified assessors | Independent, evidence-based training standards for UK university educators |
| 4. Transparency | Assessment method and more granular classifications shown on degree transcripts |
| 5. Agreed concepts and terminology | Sector-wide definitions of terms such as “exam”, “essay”, open and closed book |
| 6. Embed changes in regulation | Revised quality assurance standards reflecting the above |
Source: Policy Exchange, “Evidence of Learning Through Assessment”, summary of recommendations, 17 August 2026.
On classification, the report notes that the current honours scheme places roughly half of all undergraduates between 60 and 70 per cent, and it calls for a more granular scheme while warning that this “requires the underlying incentives to also change, lest degree inflation simply rise further”. It cites Office for Students data showing first-class degrees rising from about 7 to 8 per cent in the mid-1990s to a peak of 37.7 per cent in 2020-21. On training, it observes that the Office for Students “does not even require external examiners to be trained”, and that the Quality Assurance Agency asks universities to provide adequate training without saying what it should contain. It points to the OSCE format in medicine, the OSPE in STEM subjects and the SQE-2 in law as multi-station practical models that could extend to other disciplines.
Reaction
The report carries a foreword by the Rt Hon Sir Vince Cable, described in it as former Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, who writes that “in-person examination should replace remote assessment unless the latter is fully secure”. A separate endorsement comes from Lord Mendoza CBE, provost of Oriel College, Oxford, who states that “universities must act now to put their house in order, before it is too late”. Times Higher Education attributed that line to a foreword by Mendoza; the report presents Cable’s foreword and Mendoza’s endorsement as separate items.
A Universities UK spokesperson told the Daily Mail that “it is crucial that students, employers, and the public can trust the degrees universities award”, adding that universities “have robust policies in place to address concerns if and where this is not followed”. No response from the Office for Students, the Quality Assurance Agency or the Department for Education was available at the time of writing.
The debate over how institutions document their own approach continues elsewhere. Winss has reported on Brown University publishing its first generative AI in teaching report, and on trial evidence that AI tutoring access alone does not change student behaviour.
About Policy Exchange
Policy Exchange is a London-based think tank founded in 2002 and registered as a charity, number 1096300, with offices at 1 Old Queen Street, Westminster. It publishes research across education, home affairs, energy, defence and constitutional policy, and its education work has covered curriculum reform, school accountability and higher education regulation. The author of this report, Philip M. Newton, is Professor of Neuroscience at Swansea University Medical School, which he joined in 2009 from the University of California, San Francisco; he holds a PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology from the University of Leeds and an MSc in medical education from Cardiff University, and has published research on contract cheating, learning styles and assessment security. The Freedom of Information study and the student survey underpinning this report were both published in peer-reviewed journals in 2025, and Policy Exchange has now used them to make a regulatory case that unsupervised online exams should end before the 2026-27 academic year settles into the same pattern.
Sources: Policy Exchange; Policy Exchange; Quality in Higher Education; Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education; Times Higher Education
Featured image: photo by https://kaboompics.com/ on Pexels (free Pexels license).
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I specialize in sustainability education, curriculum co-creation, and early-stage project strategy. At WINSS, I craft articles on sustainability, transformative AI, and related topics. When I’m not writing, you’ll find me chasing the perfect sushi roll, exploring cities around the globe, or unwinding with my dog Puffy — the world’s most loyal sidekick.
