Case Study: Office of the Board of Studies New South Wales achieves secure, accurate onscreen marking with LANSA

OBOS scores top marks for Onscreen Marking

The Office of the Board of Studies New South Wales (OBOS), the certifying authority for NSW high school exams, faced a massive, paper‑based marking challenge: tens of thousands of students across hundreds of exams, 1.75 million writing booklets and thousands of markers and supervisors to coordinate each year. Managing this scale while ensuring fair, consistent and cost‑effective marking placed heavy logistical and quality pressures on OBOS’s processes.

Using LANSA and the IBM i platform, OBOS implemented an Onscreen Marking system that scans scripts to PDF, uses LANSA Integrator to validate and assemble files, and delivers a browser‑based marking workflow with role‑based tools, real‑time dashboards, secure SSL encryption and MP3 handling for oral exams. The result is instantaneous marker‑reliability data, faster corrective action, more objective and consistent marking, reduced paper handling and costs, and access to a larger, remote pool of qualified markers — outcomes that have been well received by staff and teachers.

Office of the Board of Studies

Mitra Bhar

Manager IT