What Remote Proctoring Actually Involves

The notice of competition disposes of test day in one sentence: the tests “will be held and proctored (invigilated) remotely”, and EPSO will inform candidates about the modalities at the latest when it invites them. That sentence hides a fairly demanding set of conditions. You are not simply logging into a website. You are running a locked-down browser extension with administrator rights on your own machine, submitting to a room scan, and operating under a desk policy that permits exactly eight categories of object. Candidates who discover this on the morning of the test lose marks to logistics.

What follows is drawn from EPSO’s own instructions for online testing, the document that is sent with the invitation letter. It is the least glamorous preparation you will do and probably the highest return per minute spent.

Two pieces of software, one session

EPSO testing runs on TAO and Proctorio at the same time.

• TAO is the test platform itself — where the questions live, where you navigate, flag items for review and submit.
• Proctorio is a browser extension that handles invigilation. Before TAO opens it runs the browser, identity and environment checks, then hands you back to TAO to start.

One detail is worth holding on to, because it changes how you should think about the whole thing: Proctorio is not an automated decision-making tool, though it can terminate an exam in progress. It records audio, video and screen activity, flags what looks anomalous, and passes that to EPSO and the selection board, who decide whether a breach occurred — after your test has been submitted. So an alert is not a verdict. It is also not something you want to spend the test worrying about, which is the practical argument for getting the setup right in advance.

The machine you sit it on

The hardware requirements are unusually specific, and two of them disqualify the computer most professionals use every day.

Read the display rule twice. Single display is enforced, and connecting a second screen during the test is one of the automatic terminations. If you normally work on a laptop plus monitor, decide now which one you are using and set the machine up that way for every practice session between now and the test.

The clean desk policy

EPSO publishes an exhaustive list of what may be on your desk. Exhaustive means what it says — anything not on the list is forbidden.

The tools you do get

The compensation for the empty desk is a toolbar inside TAO. Depending on the test, it can include:

• Calculator — keyboard or on-screen buttons; press the equals sign rather than Enter to evaluate. Movable and resizable.
• Scratchpad — a window you can write and draw in, with a select tool, a text box, a freehand brush, shapes (rectangles, ellipses, straight lines) and an eraser. Resizable and repositionable.
• Highlighter — marks text inside a question; works on text, not on images, and is visible only to you.
• Line reader — a horizontal strip that greys out everything except the line you are on. Genuinely useful on dense verbal passages.
• Answer elimination and masking — cross out options you have ruled out, or hide them.
• Zoom, attached-document viewer, accessibility tools, and a bookmark to flag questions for later review, with an overview panel showing what you have answered.

Every one of these costs a few seconds to operate the first time and almost none the fiftieth. That is the argument for doing your timed practice with the constraint in place: no paper, arithmetic either mental or through an on-screen calculator, and a habit of flagging rather than agonising.

Before the day: the check you only get once

There is a mandatory technical prerequisite check, run from the TAO portal before your test date. It confirms your device works with the software and lets you explore the interface. It does not affect your result. Two things about it matter:

• You are allowed one per competition and it cannot be repeated. Do not burn it casually.
• Run it on the exact setup you will use — same computer, same peripherals, same settings, preferably the same room. A check passed on your home desktop tells you nothing about the laptop you will actually sit on.

EPSO also offers public TAO sessions: anonymous practice sessions that generate no score and do not showcase every feature, but let you handle the interface without spending your one prerequisite check. If the platform is unfamiliar, that is where to spend an evening.

Check-in, step by step

On the day you open the invitation in the Single Candidate Portal, follow the TAO Portal link, sign in through EU Login, and click Start. Proctorio then walks you through:

1. Before you begin — a page listing required actions, such as closing extra tabs or disconnecting a second screen. You cannot continue until the red warnings are cleared.
2. System diagnostics — webcam, microphone, internet connection, desktop environment. You will be asked to grant camera, microphone and screen-recording permissions. On a Mac you may need to allow screen recording in System Settings first — do that before test day.
3. Webcam image test — photos to confirm your face is visible. Sit in a well-lit room and avoid a window behind you: strong backlight makes a face undetectable. Remove hats and, if you can, glasses, which glare.
4. Identity check — hold your photo ID inside the green frame until it is captured. If your ID does not show your name and photograph on the same side, you must upload a single PDF with both sides to your candidate account; that upload is due by 23:59 CET on the calendar day after the tests at the latest, and skipping it risks disqualification.
5. Room and desk scan — slowly move the camera over the room, your desk, under the desk, around your chair and behind the screen. With an integrated webcam you can pick the laptop up and rotate it. Clear prohibited items first; the scan is not the moment to discover a notebook.
6. Exam agreement, and the test begins automatically.

Log in a few minutes early. Sessions are greyed out until their scheduled start time, so if yours looks inactive, refresh rather than panic — but note that late login is on the list of complaints that do not automatically earn a retest.

The twelve automatic terminations

Some behaviours are judged after the fact by EPSO and the selection board. Others end the test there and then, without a human in the loop. EPSO lists these:

Two of these deserve a warning label. First, EPSO singles out the “X” button in the browser’s address bar: clicking it exits full screen and ends the session permanently. The same goes for clicking a popup notification. Mute your notifications at the operating-system level before you start — not the app level, the OS.

Second, opening a new browser tab is not merely discouraged. The testing software closes any new tab automatically and can remove you from the session instantly.

What happens if something goes wrong

The two-minute disconnection limit is the number to know. A brief blip is survivable; two minutes is not. If your home connection is unreliable, that is a fact to establish now, not at 09:40 on test day. Ethernet beats wi-fi; wi-fi beats tethering; tethering means a phone, which cannot be on your desk.

Technical problems during the test go to TAO support (operated by Intelcia), Monday to Friday 09:00–18:00 CET, in English and French, on +351 211 554 559. There is a protocol for the call itself: your muted phone stays off the desk at a reasonable distance and out of reach, you may stand to fetch it, you must return to your seat without delay, and you must stay seated in front of the camera for the whole call. Save the number to your phone in advance — EPSO explicitly suggests it, and looking up a number while a timer runs is not a good use of two minutes.

If something genuinely outside your control stops you from taking the test at all, there is a force majeure route: notify EPSO immediately — no later than the complaint deadline — through the Single Candidate Portal, with your candidate number and supporting documents covering the test date, such as a medical certificate or an attestation of a power or internet outage. Collective disruptions like natural disasters or large-scale server failures are considered separately, and remedial action taken. What does not qualify, in EPSO’s words, are professional or private obligations: meetings, conferences, business trips, private travel.

During the test itself

The behavioural rules are short and enforced by continuous audio, video and screen recording. Stay seated with your face visible and uncovered. Do not speak or read aloud — not the questions, not the options, not to yourself. Do not stand up. Do not let anyone else enter the room. No smoking or eating; drinks are the stated exception. If you have been authorised additional breaks for special needs, security checks continue during them and the timer keeps its own schedule — when break time ends the system moves on by itself.

One more small thing with outsized consequences: check that your keyboard layout matches the test language before you start, and that your system clock matches your time zone. Both are on EPSO’s pre-test list, and both are the kind of detail that only becomes interesting at the worst moment.

The point of all this

Remote proctoring converts a set of assumptions you have carried since school — that you can scribble, glance away, get up, ask a question — into rule violations. None of it is hard. All of it is unfamiliar. The candidates who lose marks to it are not the ones who break rules deliberately; they are the ones who meet the rules for the first time on the morning of the exam, spend the first ten minutes rattled, and carry that into a 35-minute verbal test that decides 35% of their final score.

Set your machine up this month. Practise with an empty desk. Then the only thing left to think about on the day is the questions.

Next: the 8-week prep plan for the Oct–Nov sitting, how Part 1 and Part 2 fit together, and numerical reasoning — the test most affected by the no-paper rule.

Frequently asked questions