Thousands of students working under the OCR and Cambridge International exam boards will sit on-screen mock ‘high stakes’ exams for the first time starting this week.

GCSE Computer Science as well as IGCSEs in English and AS Level History are the first subjects being trialled, which will see schools pay around £10 for each digital exam.

Jill Duffy, chief executive of OCR, said: “Students and teachers embraced digital learning by necessity during the pandemic. Now we can harness the best of that technology in assessment by choice.”

The digital mock trials will run in weekly sessions until 19 March in up to 30 UK schools and 35 international schools in places including Chile and Zambia.

The on-screen mocks, based on real exam papers, will be marked by Cambridge examiners and results delivered to students within 14 days.

Following these 2023 trials, the digital mock service will be offered to all schools as a permanent part of its assessment services, Cambridge...