Yes there are still groundschool exams, yet there is no formal instructor-to-student tuition. The crit-point content is taught via booklets containing the syllabus content relevant to each crit-point.
Clearly if a student has a problem with a particular element of the syllabus then the instructors are available to help with queries, and in some cases - for example the nav phase of the syllabus, may offer a more direct tutoring to aid in understanding of what are quite tricky concepts to the complete ab-initio.
For some of the exams - for example crit-point two, the pre first solo test - the pass mark is 100%, in other cases this is reduced to 90 or 80%.
The exams are taken seriously and are kept in a log along with the students sortie assessments (no longer the old EFT tick sheets because there is no scoring system), however - the exams are often taken unsupervised in a quiet room - it's down to the honesty of the student as to whether they cheat or not.
The whole problem arises here with the reduction in QFIs on the UAS - in some cases there is only one fully serving instructor aided by a full time reservist, and occasionally pilots from the AEF who have regained their QFI qualification - there is simply not enough full-time staff able to instruct and supervise groundschool when they are often flying five or six sorties a day.