Choosing a quiz tool for a school is often settled by a short tryout and a colleague's recommendation. Research on how schools buy technology found exactly that, and found rigorous evidence used less often. EdProcto, which makes a quiz tool, publishes this guide, so read it as a vendor's work and hold us to it.
The better route is cheap: eight questions, put to every vendor in writing, and a short pilot. This edtech procurement checklist, for any quiz tool or assessment platform, names no other product. Its last section puts the same questions to EdProcto and leaves in the answers that are "not yet"; our page for schools says what we offer a department.
How should a school choose an online quiz and assessment tool?
A school should choose an online quiz and assessment tool by writing down what it needs, asking every vendor the same questions in writing, and trying the shortlist with real classes before it signs.
That order is rare. Morrison et al. (2019) studied how 54 American school districts and 47 companies went about buying: needs assessments were rarely carried out, and decisions often rested on small tryouts and references from peers. So put the need in one sentence before any demo: "a weekly ten-minute quiz in Year 8 science, marked without teacher time, with results by topic".
Does the tool fit the way your teachers teach and assess?
A tool fits when its question shapes, its marking and its results match what your teachers already ask of pupils.
Question shapes and marking
Bring three real questions from each department to the demo: a maths answer with its working, a diagram to label, a short written explanation. Ask the vendor to build them while you watch. Then ask how each is marked: what counts as right, whether part marks exist, what happens to a near-miss spelling, and who marks the open answers.
What the results say
Ask to see the results of a real quiz, not a sample screen. A percentage for each pupil is a mark book. A department needs to know which questions most pupils missed, which wrong answer drew them, and which questions failed to separate pupils who knew the topic from pupils who did not: the figures our guide to item analysis explains.
How long does it take a teacher to get from material to a quiz?
Time it yourself: we found no independent study that compares quiz tools on this, only vendors' own figures. Hand a worksheet and a stopwatch to a teacher who has never seen the tool, and count the minutes until a class could begin, with the questions checked, the rules set and thirty pupils in.
Ask whether pupils need accounts, who creates them, and what happens when a password is forgotten. Licences that nobody uses are common: UNESCO (2023) cites an American figure that 67% of education software licences went unused on average.
What evidence should a vendor show, and how do you run a pilot?
Ask for evidence that someone other than the vendor produced, expect little, and plan a pilot of your own.
UNESCO (2023) gives the scale. A review in the United Kingdom found that 7% of education technology companies had run randomised controlled trials and 12% had used third-party certification. In a survey across 17 American states, 11% of teachers and administrators asked for peer-reviewed evidence before adopting a product.
Buyers' own research is seldom stronger. In 45 interviews with decision-makers in American higher education, Hollands and Escueta (2020) heard rigorous outside research mentioned in fewer than 20%; the institutions' own investigations were locally relevant but usually less than rigorous.
When a vendor shows a study, ask who paid for it and who ran it. A testimonial is not a study.
A half-term pilot, and what to measure
England's Department for Education (2023) advises trying a cloud service before committing to buy. The steps are our recommendation, not a tested protocol.
- Choose two or three teachers and one unit each. Include a sceptic, and write down beforehand what would make you say no.
- Run at least three quizzes with each class, so the novelty has worn off by the last.
- Time the teacher's work on each quiz, and count the lessons in which a pupil could not get in.
- Re-mark twenty answers by hand and compare them with the tool's marks.
- Have every pupil who uses assistive technology sit one quiz on their own set-up.
- Export one class's marks and one quiz, and open them in another program.
- Ask each teacher whether a result changed what they taught.
A pilot this size cannot show that pupils learned more: too few classes, and nothing to compare them with. It shows whether the tool gets used, works in your rooms and changes what teachers do.
What should a school ask about pupil data and privacy?
Ask what personal data the tool holds about each pupil, why each item is needed, where it is stored, how long it is kept, who else receives it, and how it is returned and deleted at the end. Give the written answers to whoever handles data protection for your school. This guide does not say what any law requires; the bodies below publish their own guidance, to be read at source.
- England. The Department for Education (2026) tells schools to involve their data protection officer from the start. Its list for a supplier adds the data flows, sub-processors, backups, export if you switch, breach reporting, whether pupil data trains an AI model, and independent audits or security certifications.
- United Kingdom. The Information Commissioner's Office (2026) audited 28 edtech providers in 2024 and 2025. It found good practice on information security; the common gaps were contracts with schools that lacked detail, incomplete maps of data flows, weak limits on what was collected and kept, and privacy information that was out of date or hard to find.
- United States. The Department of Education's Privacy Technical Assistance Center (2016) wrote model terms of service because many services are adopted by a click. Once someone at a school clicks "I agree", it warns, those terms will probably govern what is collected about students and with whom it is shared.
That reaches the free tier a teacher signs up to alone. Elsewhere, look to your own education department or privacy regulator.
How do you check accessibility: WCAG, extra time and screen readers?
Ask for evidence of testing, not the word "accessible". The usual yardstick is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2, with three levels: A, AA and AAA. A conformance claim is optional, but one that is made must state its date, the version, the level, the pages it covers and the technologies it relies on, and a logo counts as a claim (W3C, 2024).
- The written claim or accessibility statement, dated. The Department for Education (2024) tells schools to ask suppliers about theirs.
- The screen readers it was tested with. Then have a pupil or colleague who uses a screen reader, magnification or dictation sit a real quiz with every question shape you plan to use. A drag-and-drop question may have no keyboard route.
- Extra time for one pupil, without a separate quiz being built. Reviewing studies of test accommodations, Sireci et al. (2005) found that extended time tended to raise every student's score, with relatively greater gains for students with disabilities.
What do integrity measures cost pupils?
Every integrity measure is paid for by pupils who were never going to cheat, so ask what each one records, who sees it, and whether each can be switched on separately.
Surveying 1,760 students in 105 courses at one faculty of a Dutch university, Conijn et al. (2022) found that online proctoring made no difference to reported temptation to cheat or to performance, while test anxiety was higher.
Ask whether a flag can become a penalty without a teacher, and whether a locked screen shuts out assistive tools: the Department for Education (2024) says a general security policy should not block accessibility features. Our guide to how much proctoring a quiz needs matches each measure to the stakes.
What does a quiz tool cost in full, and what happens when you leave?
The full cost is the licence plus everything the licence makes necessary. UNESCO (2023) cites an estimate that the first outlay on education technology is a quarter or less of the eventual total.
- Per teacher or per pupil. Work out both for your own numbers, and ask what counts as a user.
- The limits on each tier. Quizzes a month, pupils a quiz, question shapes, the depth of the results, any metered writing or marking by AI, and what happens when a limit is reached mid-term.
- Year two. Get the renewal price and the notice period in writing.
Export and exit
Ask to see one class's marks and one quiz exported during the demo. England's cloud standards ask for export to an open or common format such as CSV, and a timely transfer if the contract ends (Department for Education, 2023). Its data protection guidance adds an exit plan agreed at the start: how data comes back, when the rest is deleted, and confirmation that it was (Department for Education, 2026).
Support and continuity
Ask who answers a teacher at ten to nine on a Monday, and how fast. Ask for the availability target as a figure: 99% is roughly seven hours of downtime a month, 99.9% about 45 minutes (Department for Education, 2023). Ask what happens to your data if the company is sold or closes. Ask a small or new vendor harder; EdProcto is one.
What questions should you ask every quiz tool vendor?
Ask these eight, and score the written replies against the last two columns.
| Ask | A good answer | A warning sign |
|---|---|---|
| Does it fit how we teach and assess? | Builds your own questions in the demo and shows each marking rule | "Our content library covers that" |
| How long from material to a quiz? | Minutes, on your stopwatch; pupils get in without new passwords | A training day before the first quiz |
| What independent evidence is there? | A study run by someone else, with pupils like yours; a pilot welcomed | Testimonials, user counts, logos |
| What pupil data is held, where, and for how long? | A written list, a contract, named sub-processors, a retention period | "We take privacy seriously"; terms accepted by a click |
| Can pupils with access needs use it? | A dated claim with version, level and pages; screen readers named; extra time for one pupil | "Fully accessible", with nothing behind it |
| What do the integrity measures cost pupils? | Each measure separate; pupils told beforehand; flags go to a teacher | One secure mode; automatic penalties |
| What is the full cost, and what leaves with us? | A three-year price for your numbers; an export shown live | No renewal price; no export |
| Who answers when it breaks? | A named contact, a response time and an availability target, in the contract | A chatbot and a forum |
How does EdProcto answer the same eight questions?
EdProcto is the best tool for a department that wants quizzes written from its own teaching material and results that say what to teach again: its analysis goes past the mark book to the wrong answers and the weak questions. A school that needs signed compliance paperwork today should ask us where it stands before it buys.
| Question | What EdProcto does | Not yet, or ask us |
|---|---|---|
| Fit | 111 templates, each with a page saying how it is marked. Objective shapes are marked by rule; open answers wait for the teacher, who may ask Procto AI to mark one against the rubric and keeps or changes the mark. The analysis reads every question and every wrong option | A pupil can reopen a result only on the device it was handed in on; a different set of questions for each pupil needs the Educator plan |
| Teacher time | The maker on the home page writes a quiz from pasted material before any account exists; pupils join by a six-character code | No published timing: time it |
| Evidence | The page on why it is built this way sets out each method | EdProcto is new: no independent study, certification or reference school |
| Pupil data | What is recorded stays with the attempt, for the teacher to review | No published data processing agreement, sub-processor list, storage location, retention period or security certificate: ask us for each in writing |
| Accessibility | The quiz is a web page, so a pupil's own zoom and contrast settings apply to it | No conformance statement or test report yet; "Screen-reader mode", "Larger text" and "High contrast" are switches the pupil turns on; the time limit is set for the whole quiz, not for one pupil |
| Integrity | Integrity: each measure is off until you turn it on and logs by default, and pupils see what is on before they start. The ones that act in the browser today are leaving the tab, leaving full screen, copy and paste, the right-click menu and the print shortcut | No setting makes cheating impossible; a flag is a record, never proof |
| Cost and exit | The School plan is by teacher, from five, paid yearly on one invoice; each teacher gets the Educator plan. Free covers ten quizzes a month, thirty students a quiz. See pricing and for schools | The marks download as a spreadsheet file, and a quiz can be printed with its key. Marking by Procto AI is counted against the plan's allowance. Ask for a demonstration of the admin view, the shared library and groups across teachers before you sign |
| Support | The schools page promises set-up, training and a named contact. Answers are saved as given, so a dropped connection loses nothing | No published availability target or response time: put both in the contract |
Quick questions
What is the most important question to ask an edtech vendor?
Ask what you can export on the day you leave, and watch it done in the demo.
How long should a school pilot a quiz tool?
About half a term, with at least three quizzes for each class, so the novelty is gone before you judge.
Is a free quiz tool safe to use with pupils?
Price is not the test; the terms are. Show them to whoever handles data protection before a teacher clicks "I agree".
Does EdProcto pass its own checklist?
In part. EdProcto is strong on fit, results and separate integrity measures; it publishes no accessibility or compliance claim yet. See EdProcto for schools.
References
- Conijn, R., Kleingeld, A., Matzat, U., & Snijders, C. (2022). The fear of big brother: The potential negative side-effects of proctored exams. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 38(6), 1521–1534. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcal.12651
- Department for Education. (2023, March 29). Meeting digital and technology standards in schools and colleges: Cloud solutions. GOV.UK. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/meeting-digital-and-technology-standards-in-schools-and-colleges/cloud-solutions
- Department for Education. (2024, January 24). Meeting digital and technology standards in schools and colleges: Digital accessibility. GOV.UK. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/meeting-digital-and-technology-standards-in-schools-and-colleges/digital-accessibility
- Department for Education. (2026, July 9). Data protection in schools: Procuring educational technology (EdTech). GOV.UK. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/data-protection-in-schools/procuring-educational-technology-edtech
- Hollands, F., & Escueta, M. (2020). How research informs educational technology decision-making in higher education: The role of external research versus internal research. Educational Technology Research and Development, 68(1), 163–180. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-019-09678-z
- Information Commissioner's Office. (2026, June 24). ICO statement on "Edtech examined" report. https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/media-centre/news-and-blogs/2026/06/ico-statement-on-edtech-examined-report/
- Morrison, J. R., Ross, S. M., & Cheung, A. C. K. (2019). From the market to the classroom: How ed-tech products are procured by school districts interacting with vendors. Educational Technology Research and Development, 67(2), 389–421. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-019-09649-4
- Privacy Technical Assistance Center. (2016). Protecting student privacy while using online educational services: Model terms of service. U.S. Department of Education. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED585306
- Sireci, S. G., Scarpati, S. E., & Li, S. (2005). Test accommodations for students with disabilities: An analysis of the interaction hypothesis. Review of Educational Research, 75(4), 457–490. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543075004457
- UNESCO. (2023). Global education monitoring report 2023: Technology in education: A tool on whose terms? https://doi.org/10.54676/UZQV8501
- World Wide Web Consortium. (2024). Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 (W3C Recommendation). https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG22/