The Exam Platform I Built: Candidate Entry to Certificate, in One System

What this is, plainly

Perform Data Track is my own software, not a client engagement. I mention that first because it changes how you should read the rest of this page: there is no client here whose results I can quote back at you. What there is instead is a working platform that has been running real exam sessions for a UK performing-arts training organisation, in continuous development since February 2023.

It is on this site because it is the most direct evidence I have of the thing I now build: assessment and certification systems for organisations that formally assess people and have to keep an auditable record of the outcome.

The problem it solves

An awarding organisation, a college, or a training provider running graded qualifications has the same pipeline whatever it calls the stages:

• Candidates are entered, usually on a form somebody downloads, fills in, and emails back
• Somebody retypes those entries into a spreadsheet
• Candidates are grouped into sittings by level and discipline
• Examiners mark them, often on paper, and the marks are typed in afterwards by someone who was not in the room
• Certificates and feedback sheets are produced by hand from a template
• The records are kept well enough to survive a query, until one arrives about a result from three years ago

Every one of those handoffs is a place for the record to drift. The standard being awarded is rigorous; the administration around it usually is not, because it grew a spreadsheet at a time.

What the platform does

Organisations, schools and learners. The tenant is the organisation. Schools sit underneath it, learners sit underneath those, and each learner carries an individual learner number. New cohorts load in bulk from CSV rather than one at a time.

Sessions and exam groups. A session is a sitting on a date. Within it, candidates are grouped by exam level and genre, which is how the syllabus actually divides them. Each session knows its own state: still editable, ready to mark, or fully marked.

Examiner marking. Examiners record a grade, a total and written comments against each candidate, in the system, at the point of judgement. The session tracks how many candidates remain unmarked, so nobody has to chase a paper register to find out.

Certificates and feedback sheets. Generated as PDFs from the marks already held, either downloaded or previewed in the browser. No mail merge, no retyping a candidate's name onto something they will keep for life.

Exports and records. Every session exports to a spreadsheet, because plenty of the people who need this data still want it in a spreadsheet, and refusing them one just means somebody rebuilds it by hand.

Roles that match how these organisations staff. Administrator, teacher and examiner, with different views of the same data. Staff who hold more than one role switch between them in session rather than logging out and back in, because in a small organisation the same person is frequently two of the three.

How it was built

Laravel with Livewire, Alpine and Tailwind, on MySQL. Authentication and permissions through Laravel Sanctum and spatie/laravel-permission. Certificates and feedback sheets through the PDF stack; session exports through PhpSpreadsheet. It is installable as a progressive web app, and its help centre content syncs from Notion so guidance can be edited without a deploy.

None of that is interesting to a registrar, and it is not meant to be. It is here because anyone evaluating a solo developer for a system like this is entitled to know it is a conventional, maintainable stack rather than something clever that only I can work on.

Where it stands

Perform Data Track is not sold as a subscription product. It is sold as a fixed-price implementation of a platform that already exists: the syllabi, grades and levels configured to what you actually award, your existing records migrated, your teachers and examiners onboarded and trained. That work sits in the Scale band.

The alternative is worth saying out loud: ExamTrack is a UK product built specifically for awarding organisations and it is already used across the performing arts. If what you award fits its model, buying it will be faster and cheaper than commissioning anything from me. The assessment and certification systems page sets out honestly when a custom build wins and when it does not.

You can see the platform at performdatatrack.co.uk.