Evaluating the achievements and challenges in reforming a national language exam: The reform team’s perspective

This paper outlines the reform of the national school-leaving exam in Austria from a teacher-designed exam to a professionally developed and standardized exam for the foreign languages English, French, Italian and Spanish, evaluating the unexpected challenges met along the way from the project team’s perspective. It describes the assessment context prior to the reform to illustrate the perceived need for change and outlines the steps taken to address this need. The paper explains how key features of the exam reform project were implemented step-by-step to raise awareness with stakeholders and convince authorities to support and adopt the new approach. Reporting on the various stages of the project, it evaluates its success in introducing one standardized CEFR-based test for all students nationwide. The paper in particular highlights the unexpected political, technical and practical challenges faced, and how these were addressed, overcome or endured and with what consequences. The paper concludes with reflections and recommendations on how comparable test development projects may be approached.