No assessment-innovation sandbox or redesign fund for post-AI school qualifications

JCQ's guidance on AI use in assessments rests on teachers authenticating coursework and students keeping screenshots of their AI prompts, which is unenforceable at scale and leaves coursework-heavy GCSE and A-level subjects exposed. Ofqual's on-screen consultation from December 2025 caps innovation at two small-entry specifications per exam board with delivery around 2030, and the boards' earlier digital plans were already delayed in 2024. No regulatory sandbox lets boards trial fundamentally different assessment models with live cohorts, whether secure digital, adaptive or oral, and no fund pays for redesign during Curriculum and Assessment Review implementation.

Qualification integrity is the currency of the school system. Coursework that becomes unverifiable before 2030 pushes the system back towards terminal handwritten exams, which narrows what is assessed at the moment the review is trying to broaden it.

An Ofqual regulatory sandbox granting time-limited waivers for pilot qualifications, paired with a DfE and exam-board co-funded assessment R&D fund to redesign coursework in exposed subjects for first teaching alongside the 2028 curriculum.

// Build together: Counterparty: Ofqual (sandbox waivers) plus exam boards co-funding NEA redesign; no new law needed for pilots.

Coursework integrity across exposed GCSEs is already unverifiable, Ofqual caps pilots, and no fund pays for redesign before the 2028 curriculum and 2030 delivery.