Hi Rachel
I dealt with Trinity for ESOL S&L exams back in 2004/5, I don't know if they've made any changes so this might be a bit out of date.
We found them to be unbelievably expensive, especially if you have large numbers of ESOL students. You have to book their examiners for a minimum of half a day and you need to calculate how many examiners you need for each exam session so you have the right numbers to cover all the student you have entered.
The logistics of arranging the exam sessions can be a major headache, not sure what your ESOL students are like but ours were not especially reliable when given specific days/times to attend and they each have to have a specific appointment time for their exam. There was also the need for different waiting rooms, one for the students waiting prior to the exam, another for them to wait in after they have done their individual bit of the exam and before they did the group discussion.
If the exam format is still the same and you have large numbers ie several exam rooms (and ours were across several sites as well) you will need several extra waiting rooms and staff to maintain strict control of the movement of students from one room to another.
Timings have to be strictly adhered to otherwise you could get to the end of the examiners session and still have students waiting for their exam. In my experience an examiner might stay a few minutes over their time but not longer and it depends on the good will of the examiner, so if your students arrive late they or other students might not get their exam because you simply run out of the scheduled time.
Suffice it to say, curriculum thought they were great, as they didn't have to do the assessments, but we moved away from them after the one year because of the cost and the logistical nightmare of trying to manage the actual exam sessions.
This is just my personal view and I was with a different college at the time.
lynda
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