Pearson VUE
City & Guilds 
City & Guilds offers more than 500 workrelated qualifications in around 28 industry sectors
Quick links:
Home > Case Studies > City & Guilds
 
“Pearson VUE and Promissor have deep understanding and experience of assessment. We speak the same language and they both understand and address our concerns when it comes to issues of quality.”
Quote by DR GERALDINE KENNEY-WALLACE, CITY & GUILDS’ GROUP DIRECTOR OF NEW VENTURES 
case study

About City & Guilds
City & Guilds offers more than 500 work-related qualifications in around 28 industry sectors, making it the UK’s leading awarding body in the vocational market. Founded in 1878, it is a Royal Chartered Institute and registered charity, which today has more than 1.8 million learners a year in over 100 countries.

Assessment strategy
In 2001, City and Guilds put in place a strategic plan to deliver 80% of its objective assessments by computer by the end of 2006. With learners and centres (including colleges, employers and training providers) spanning the globe, City & Guilds sought a strategic partner as well as a technically advanced solution to help create and deliver computer based tests.

Flexible and scalable
City and Guilds selected Promissor, a company acquired by Pearson VUE in 2006. Promissor offered an easy to use test development tool that gave them the flexibility to develop their own computer based tests with a scalable and quick to deploy test delivery system.

In partnership with Promissor, City & Guilds created GOLA (Global OnLine Assessment), a test delivery platform that offered flexible, on-demand eassessment, including content creation, delivery and administration.

Test development
By using the Promissor Builder software, City & Guilds creates, develops and refreshes up to 50 new and existing online tests every month - and it continues to migrate paper-based exams onto the system.

Test delivery
City and Guilds has administered more than 1.4m candidate e-assessments using Promissor – 670,000 in the last year alone – and today handles 85% of all objective assessments online.

Exceptional service
To enable City & Guilds to offer a seamless and uniformly high level of service, GOLA capability has been deployed since 2002 into 4000 test centres worldwide, all of which benefit from 24/7 help desk support.

“Our focus is on learners, and eassessment with Promissor offers learners an on-demand, flexible and responsive approach.” DR GERALDINE KENNEY-WALLACE

Why e-assessment?
E-assessment offers substantial benefits when compared to paper-based methods, including:

  • Speed - results are often returned within 24 hours
  • Insight – candidates can see how they performed on each question 
  • Flexibility – a bank of test questions can be  delivered at random, with no need for candidates to sit tests on the same day
  • Efficiency - no need to distribute, store or retrieve test papers 
  • Security - handwritten scripts can get lost 
  • Innovation - multi-media content can be used in assessment 
  • Data Quality -management information is available online 
  • Ease of use - only minimal computer knowledge required by candidates

The future
Growing demand for English language qualifications has led City & Guilds to adapt its long standing IESOL qualification to incorporate sophisticated question forms and audio content, with Promissor’s support.

City & Guilds is also using e-testing and e-assessment to enable work-based learners to test their skills and knowledge as they work towards NVQs, from basic to chartered professionals and master-level equivalents.

About Pearson VUE
Pearson VUE is the world’s leading assessment and testing business, with a focus on advanced technology and exceptional service. Promissor is a Pearson VUE solution that is used throughout the world in fields including insurance, contracting, employment and healthcare.

How we can help
If you offer paper-based tests, we can ensure you maintain standards while making the transition to computer based testing. We offer a flexible range of services, including:

  • Test development
  • Registration and scheduling
  • Test delivery through Pearson VUE’s global network of test centres in 160 countries, or in your own test centres 
  • Management information
  • Security and data integrity, including physical, password and encryption systems