Cirrus Assessment and Schoolyear have announced a new partnership designed to give universities, awarding bodies and professional testing organisations an additional way to protect in-person examinations.
Through the integration, institutions can deliver Cirrus exams within the Schoolyear secure environment. Throughout an assessment, the candidate’s entire device is locked down, preventing access to unauthorised websites, AI assistants, virtual machines and remote-access software.
The partnership comes as institutions seek stronger safeguards for supervised assessments. Cirrus already provides several security measures, including live and AI-assisted remote proctoring, Safe Exam Browser and test centres, allowing institutions to select the level of control appropriate for each assessment. With AI tools and remote-access software increasingly accessible, Schoolyear provides an additional option that secures the whole device.
Candidates can download and launch Schoolyear themselves when their exam begins, removing the need for IT teams to install or configure software in advance. Schoolyear verifies that the device is secure and ready before the assessment starts. The environment operates in the same way on both institution-managed and candidate-owned devices, enabling exam teams to run supervised assessments at scale using hardware candidates already have.
Each exam session also produces a detailed activity log, providing exam teams with documented evidence should a result subsequently be challenged.
“Different exams call for different levels of control, and our job is to give institutions the right option for each one,” said Jeroen Fransen, Head of Product at Cirrus Assessment.
“For supervised exams where the stakes are highest, Schoolyear lets institutions secure the whole device, not just the browser, and it does that without asking IT to touch every machine first. Just as important, it does not come at the cost of accessibility. Candidates who rely on tools like ReadSpeaker keep them inside the secure environment, so strong security and a fair exam go together.”
“We built Schoolyear around prevention, stopping malpractice before it happens, and giving institutions access to the highest level of security,” said Wim Graas, Founder and CEO of Schoolyear.
“Cirrus is a modern platform, built by a team that keeps improving it for the institutions and candidates who depend on it, which makes it exactly the kind of partner worth building with. Bringing prevention together with Cirrus’s assessment expertise gives institutions a more complete way to protect every result.”
Schoolyear only collects the limited information required to operate an exam. The solution does not use screen recording, webcams or microphones, and all personal data remains within the EU.
The integration is available now and includes full support from both Schoolyear and Cirrus before, during and after each exam.
