Request for Information for Online Exams

The College of Policing is inviting suppliers to participate in a market engagement exercise. This activity is seeking suppliers who would be able to meet the requirements detailed below and in the attached Request for Information Document to help inform our approach to a future procurement exercise. If you are interested we would appreciate if you could download the document attached to the notice and respond by the deadline of the 14th October.

The College is responsible for setting the standards for designing, and delivering examinations for the promotion and progression of police officers in England and Wales. The assessment content is designed by specialist staff in the College and we are seeking a fully configurable online exam platform for authoring, assembling and delivering online exams. Question bank functionality is a fundamental requirement of the platform and should be integrated within the solution. The platform will be used to deliver online exams to large volumes of test takers at the same time. Currently approximately 15,000 candidates take policing exams annually, although this could increase in future years.

College exams

Candidates taking online policing exams register on AIMS (Assessment Information Management System), an online system developed by the College to support the administration and delivery of national examinations. AIMS is an intuitive cloud-based system and is designed to work on a variety of mobile devices. Candidates also access their results and feedback via AIMS. Any solution would need to integrate with AIMS so we can upload data in the form of unique candidate identifiers of registered candidates to online exam platform for a specific exam.

Prior to taking an exam candidates should be able to access the exam platform (but not the exam itself) to test the compatibility and suitability of their device with the exam platform and check any adjustments they have been granted for their exam. When they take their exam candidates will access the specific exam they are eligible and registered for. Exams are open for completion on a specific day or over a period of a number of days. All College exams that will use this solution are a test of candidates' understanding and application of law and procedure. The exams are presented in a Multiple Choice Question (MCQ) format, consisting of a scenario, question and four options, only one of which is correct. Exams contain between 30 - 150 MCQs and are timed. Any solution should enable the College to provide adjustments for exams including additional time, structuring to enable candidates to take breaks during their exam, modifications to the presentation of the exam such as changing font, font size and background colour and enabling the use of assistive software (e.g. text to speech software).

Additional information: Please note that this is a Request for Information exercise and not a formal competition. The College of Policing is seeking information to identify the suppliers in the market who may be able to meet our requirements. Through this process, we are aiming to also aid the development of our specification and identify what the most appropriate route to market is for a future procurement exercise.