I joined PJCO in July 2019 and I’ve just taken the advanced tax exam, so I have two exams left now. I’m aiming to finish my exams in December and be qualified in early 2023 as I’ll soon have my three years of experience.

The exam I’ve just done was at an exam centre, but I did three earlier exams via remote invigilation. I did the first exam by remote invigilation out of necessity because lockdown meant I couldn’t go to an exam centre. After that I did have the option to go to an exam centre but the closest exam centre for those exams was in Southampton, which is an hour and a half away, so I picked remote invigilation instead. For the exam I’ve just done, I could do it in an exam centre that is 10 minutes from the office, so I chose to go there to do it.

Overall, I’ve had good experiences with remote invigilation, but I did have to borrow a laptop when doing the on-demand exams because my personal laptop is a Mac and those exams can only be done via remote invigilation on a PC. Session-based exams are Mac-compatible though. Otherwise, the system we were booking the exams through was great and it gives a countdown to the exam you’ve booked, so you have peace of mind as to when and where to log on.

You’re also advised not to use employer laptops due to firewalls and VPNs that may be embedded in corporate laptops. 

The countdown ends half an hour before your exam time is booked for. I booked my exams for 8am and the countdowns ended at 7.30am but I probably started the exams 15-20 minutes before the time it was booked for because the invigilators and I went through everything quite quickly. When you first log in, it says it is connecting you to an invigilator and then once you’re connected, they drop you a message in the chat panel. It depends on what kind of invigilator you have as to what happens after that – one of my invigilators spoke to me through my speakers whilst the others just used the chat panel to message me, but they could hear me. 

The first thing the invigilator does is ask you to show them all around the room with the laptop camera, and where your mobile phone is which needs to be out of reach behind you. You’re not allowed pen and paper which for some exams is quite tricky – not the later exams but for early papers that require short simple calculations when being able to do the working on a piece of paper is useful. The whole setting up and getting started process is simple though.

The first two exams I did were only two hours long, so you aren’t allowed a toilet break and you end the exam when you’re done. The advanced tax exam was 3 hours long, so I was allowed one five-minute toilet break if needed.

My biggest concern with using remote invigilation was if my Wi-Fi dropped out. If I could be 100% certain that there would not be any issue with Wi-Fi and that everything would go smoothly then I would always choose remote invigilation over an exam centre. But for my own peace of mind, I chose an exam centre for my most recent exam because it was so close by.

The latest advice from ACCA is that you can minimise that risk by using an ethernet cable to hardwire your laptop into your router. Any interruption in your internet connection that is less than 2 minutes won’t interrupt the exam. In the worst-case scenario, if you’re cut off for 30 minutes then ACCA will let you do the exam again within a week.

My other worry about using remote invigilation was the possible consequences if somebody walked into my room by accident whilst I was still doing the exam under remote invigilation restrictions and started speaking as that isn’t allowed. I made sure everybody in the house knew I was doing my exam! 

Any travel taking longer than an hour would make remote invigilation a better choice. You don’t know what problems there might be with traffic or public transport.

PJCO is very supportive of exam sitting either by remote invigilation or by going to an exam centre. Quite a few of the team have booked out the meeting room to do exams by remote invigilation.

See the views of PJCO's Managing Partner below.

Peter Jarman is the Managing Partner of PJCO Chartered Certificated Accountants and gives an employers view of remote invigilation

Most of the students we've got at the moment doing ACCA have said they would prefer to do remote invigilation over going into an exam centre, now that they understand the process and the restrictions (like not picking up your mobile) and the technology works well. I think that if they're feeling confident in the technology and the environment they’re working in, they're going to give their best performance when they take those exams - as an employer, that's what we want them to do.

As an employer, I'm probably happier that I don't have to pay for them to go off to Southampton to take the exam and then spend a few hours traveling there and coming back. Taking the exams remotely either at our office or at home is perfectly fine by me and I think that the time of needing to go into an exam centre has probably gone.