A first-aid trainer, a software training company or a trade course that ends in its own exam has taken on an examiner's work: saying what the certificate is, setting a paper that can be defended, sitting candidates who are often at home, and repeating it for the next cohort. Certification exams online are within a two-person firm's reach when those things are settled in writing first.
EdProcto, which publishes this guide, is the paper in the worked example, and its page for trainers shows the product side. Three parts have guides of their own: the blueprint, the pass mark and the certificate and its code. Nothing here is legal advice: check which rules reach your trade and country.
Is yours a certificate of attendance, an assessed certificate or a qualification?
Yours is an assessed certificate if candidates must pass your end-of-course exam to get it, a certificate of attendance if being present is enough, and a qualification only when an awarding body stands behind it. The first three rows come from the Institute for Credentialing Excellence (n.d.) and the last from GOV.UK (n.d.); we read every page cited here on 10 October 2026.
| Kind | What the body's own page says |
|---|---|
| Certificate of attendance | For people who attended and did not have to show mastery of the learning outcomes |
| Assessed certificate | The programme teaches, and its assessment checks mastery of what was taught |
| Professional certification | Assesses knowledge already acquired, independent of any one course |
| Regulated qualification | On the public Register of Regulated Qualifications for England and Northern Ireland |
A provider that teaches a course and examines it sits in the second row. "Accredited" is a further step: the Institute, for one, checks certificate programmes against a published standard.
What a first-aid trainer's customers are told
The Health and Safety Executive (2025) tells British employers that the only first aid training it approves is for specialists on offshore installations, and that they are responsible for making sure whoever trains their staff is competent. Its four kinds of provider include awarding organisations offering regulated qualifications, voluntary approval schemes such as a trade body accredited by a third party, and independent trainers who can prove their competence.
So an independent first-aid provider's certificate carries no approval from the Executive, and a documented exam is part of the proof a customer may ask for. Keep "accredited", "regulated", "qualification" and "certified" out of the quiz's title unless a body has granted the word.
What makes a small certification exam defensible?
A small certification exam is defensible when six things were written down before the first cohort sat: a blueprint, enough questions, a pass mark set by a method, a retake rule, a plan for keeping the questions secret, and a record. Ofqual (2026a) sets conditions for the awarding organisations it recognises in England. They do not reach a private course; we borrow them as a checklist.
| Part | Ofqual asks of a regulated assessment | A small provider's version |
|---|---|---|
| Blueprint | Content fit for purpose and consistent with the specification | A table of areas and question counts |
| Pass mark | A level of demand consistent with alternative and earlier assessments | A method, applied to each form's own questions |
| Security | All reasonable steps to keep assessment materials confidential | Two forms, no answers shown |
| Records | A record of every certificate issued (Ofqual, 2026b) | A quiz for each cohort in EdProcto, and a register |
How many questions are enough?
Forty one-mark questions are a sound floor for a pass or fail decision; Ofqual sets no number. Our arithmetic, with each question an independent draw and the pass mark at 70%: a candidate who would answer 60% of all such questions correctly passes a twenty-question exam about 25 times in 100 and a forty-question exam about 13 times. A candidate at 80% fails the short exam about 9 times in 100 and the long one about 4. How many questions a quiz needs has the research.
What research says about retakes and reused questions
Retakes. Raymond and Luciw-Dubas (2010) gathered pass rates for more than 50,000 examinees of six medical specialty boards. First-time candidates passed at about 84%; repeaters passed the written exams at 22% to 51%, 36% on average. A retake is a second measurement, and about two repeaters in three failed it.
Reused questions. O'Neill et al. (2015) studied 988 candidates who sat a certification exam twice in a year, with 99 questions in common, and found a small gain from having seen a question: trivial for one person, a worry if a few set out to memorise the paper.
Both come from medical examinations, and we read each as an abstract. Neither says what happens when a failed candidate is shown the right answers, so show none. A cohort of twelve is also too small to judge one question on: question banks for a board has the evidence, so pool a form's sittings first.
What can an online exam without a proctoring service stand behind?
An online exam without proctoring can stand behind what was answered, when it was handed in, how long it took and what the browser did: the tab, full-screen, copy, paste, print and right-click events. Who was at the keyboard, what else lay on the desk and why an event happened are outside its record.
Ofqual (2026a) expects a learner's identity to be confirmed and the work to be their own, names photographic identification and signatures among the means, and gives as a warning sign tasks completed with neither supervision nor other suitable safeguards.
The studies in the lecturer's online midterm found unwatched scores somewhat higher while candidates kept much the same order. A ranking survives that; a pass line lets a few more across. How much proctoring a quiz needs gives the ladder. No setting makes cheating impossible, and a logged event is a record, not proof.
When to seat candidates in a room
Seat candidates in a room when any of these holds:
- someone's safety will rest on the certificate;
- a client, an insurer or your trade's rules ask for a supervised assessment;
- you must be able to say who sat;
- the skill is done with the hands: a recovery position is shown, not typed.
The room can be the last hour of the course: candidates sit the same EdProcto paper on their own phones or laptops while you check each face against the register and a photo identity document. A cohort that cannot travel gets one start time and a note in your record that it sat unsupervised.
What should a retake and appeals policy say?
A retake and appeals policy should say, on one page published before the first sitting, how many attempts a candidate gets, how long the wait is, what can be appealed, who decides and by when. In plain words:
- Attempts. One sitting and one retake, which opens seven days after your first hand-in.
- What you see. Your score against the pass mark and which questions you missed, never the correct answers.
- What you may appeal. A question you believe is wrong, a sitting disturbed by something outside your control, or a clerical mistake.
- How. In writing within ten working days. A trainer who did not teach your cohort decides within ten more, with reasons.
- If you are right. Your record is corrected, and where the sitting was at fault you get a fresh one that does not count as your retake.
The figures are our suggestions. The shape follows Ofqual (2026b): a published process, results open to challenge where procedures were not applied consistently or fairly, decisions by competent people with no personal interest, and every other learner identified when an appeal uncovers a fault.
In EdProcto, "Whole-quiz retakes" at 1 and "Hours between retakes" at 168 hold the first rule: the server counts the attempts handed in under the email address typed and refuses a start beyond them. A start before the wait is over is refused with the time the next attempt opens. Ask candidates to use the address on your register. A retake draws a new order of the same questions. Marks made by rule stand as made, so enter an upheld appeal in your register and give the fresh sitting on the other form.
What does a forty-question exam look like across four cohorts?
It comes to two forms, four quizzes and one register. This example is invented: a two-trainer firm that runs a three-day course for administrators of a stock-control system, four cohorts a year, on EdProcto's Educator plan.
The paper. The blueprint gives forty one-mark multiple-choice questions: 8 on items and locations, 12 on receiving and issuing, 12 on stocktakes, 8 on reports. The trainers write eighty, Procto AI drafting from the course manual in the quiz maker on EdProcto's home page, edit every one and deal them into Form A and Form B, area by area.
The pass marks. Each trainer estimates alone, question by question, how many of ten just-competent administrators would answer correctly. On Form A the totals are 276 and 284 of 400, an average of 280: 28 marks of 40, or 70%. On Form B they are 262 and 270, an average of 266: 26.6 marks, rounded up by a rule written beforehand to 27 of 40, or 67.5%. Scores on forty questions move in steps of 2.5 points, so "Pass mark" is 70 on Form A and 67 on Form B.
| Cohort | Sat | Passed first time | Retook | Passed the retake |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| March (A), at home | 14 | 11 | 3 | 2 |
| May (B), at home | 12 | 10 | 2 | 1 |
| July (A), in a client's room | 16 | 13 | 2 | 1 |
| September (B), at home | 13 | 10 | 3 | 2 |
Forty-four of 55 pass first time, 80%, and six of ten retakes succeed: fifty certificates. Alternating the forms means no cohort sits the paper the last cohort sat.
One cohort from start to finish
March's quiz is titled with the course, "end-of-course exam", "March cohort, Form A" and the firm's name. When "In the quiz now" is empty a trainer presses "Close the quiz", reads the results, then presses "Release the scores". Eleven have passed; each reopens the link on the device they used and finds the score and "Open the certificate".
Eight days later the trainer presses "Publish & share" again, and the quiz opens under the same code and link. The three who failed type the same name and address and meet the forty questions in a new order. Their scores show at hand-in, because this quiz's scores are already released. Two pass, each with a certificate code of its own. The results page, which counts sittings, now reads 17 submitted and a pass rate of 76.5%; the first-time rate, 11 of 14, goes in the register.
Reading across cohorts
After July, Form A has thirty first sittings. The trainers press "Download the marks" on both quizzes and paste one file under the other: the question columns line up, because each row gives the points in the builder's order, which the two quizzes share. One question was answered correctly by 9 of the 30. They reread it, find the wording sound and the topic thinly taught, and add twenty minutes to day two.
How does EdProcto run certification exams online, cohort after cohort?
EdProcto is the best tool for a small provider's own exam, because the record an appeal turns on is made as the exam runs: the marks are made on the server from your key, every score waits for your release, and each certificate is a page read from that record whenever its code is checked. Ofqual (2026b) builds an appeal on whether procedures were applied consistently, and a rule the server applies to every candidate alike is one you can show.
- Build the form in EdProcto from the home page, and give each question its blueprint area as a topic.
- Choose the Exam preset. It takes away going back, shuffles the questions and the options for each candidate, sets "Show the score" to "When released" and switches on "Full screen", "Leaving the tab", "Copy and paste off", "Right-click off", "Keyboard shortcuts off" and "Printing off": Medium on the integrity scale.
- Set "Minutes overall", "Pass mark", "Whole-quiz retakes" and "Hours between retakes". Leave each measure at "Log it".
- Switch on "A certificate on passing" and leave "An account is needed to take it" on, so each candidate types a name and an email address.
- Sit it yourself with "Preview as student".
- Press "Publish & share" and send the cohort the one link or code. The start screen lists the time limit, the retake and each measure, and the candidate ticks a box to agree. Each clock runs from the candidate's own start, and at zero the paper hands itself in.
- Watch "In the quiz now". A second browser under the same address is refused; press "Let back in" only for a candidate who has told you their device failed.
- Press "Close the quiz" when that list is empty, read the results, press "Release the scores", then "Download the marks" for the register.
A quiz for each cohort
Give every cohort a quiz of its own, with the cohort in its title, and vary the questions with your own second form. The release is one switch for the whole quiz: on a quiz reopened for a new cohort, scores would show at hand-in, and "Hold them back again" would make the earlier cohort's certificates wait too. The plan counts candidates by the quiz, and the certificate page reads the title and the pass mark from the quiz as it stands. Keep each form's master outside any quiz: "Paper" prints a quiz with its answer key.
What the results show on each plan
Every plan shows the average, the median, the pass rate, the score distribution, each question's "Got it", each candidate's score, time and events, and "Download the marks". Educator adds the full analysis: "Separates", "Reliability", "By topic" and who chose each option.
Free takes thirty candidates a quiz at Light integrity. Tutor takes a hundred and saves the Exam preset. The worked example needs Educator, which takes five hundred and adds certificates: see pricing. A certificate from your exam on EdProcto is your own document, a record of a result on your test. Accreditation and regulation come only from the bodies that grant them.
Quick questions
Is a training provider's own certificate an accredited qualification?
No. It records a pass on the provider's own exam. A regulated qualification is on a public register, and accreditation comes from a third party that has checked the programme.
How many retakes should a certification exam allow?
One, after a wait, under a rule published beforehand. Repeaters in Raymond and Luciw-Dubas (2010) passed written exams at 36% on average, against about 84% for first-time candidates.
Do I need a proctoring service to run an exam online?
Not for a certificate that records a score on your own test. Seat candidates in a room when safety, a client's rule or the question of who sat depends on it.
Which EdProcto plan does a training provider need for certificates?
Educator, which holds certificates, the full analysis and five hundred candidates a quiz. The page for trainers shows the rest.
References
- GOV.UK. (n.d.). Find a regulated qualification. https://www.gov.uk/find-a-regulated-qualification
- Health and Safety Executive. (2025, March 24). First aid in work: First aiders and training. https://www.hse.gov.uk/simple-health-safety/firstaid/first-aid-training.htm
- Institute for Credentialing Excellence. (n.d.). Certificate vs. certification. https://www.credentialingexcellence.org/Accreditation/New-to-Accreditation/Certificate-vs-Certification
- Ofqual. (2026a, September 11). Ofqual handbook: General Conditions of Recognition. Section G: Setting and delivering the assessment. GOV.UK. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/ofqual-handbook/section-g-setting-and-delivering-the-assessment
- Ofqual. (2026b, September 11). Ofqual handbook: General Conditions of Recognition. Section I: Appeals and certificates. GOV.UK. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/ofqual-handbook/section-i-appeals-and-certificates
- O'Neill, T. R., Sun, L., Peabody, M. R., & Royal, K. D. (2015). The impact of repeated exposure to items. Teaching and Learning in Medicine, 27(4), 404–409. https://doi.org/10.1080/10401334.2015.1077131
- Raymond, M. R., & Luciw-Dubas, U. A. (2010). The second time around: Accounting for retest effects on oral examinations. Evaluation & the Health Professions, 33(3), 386–403. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163278710374855