The June exams in the UK were hit with huge delays as technical issues swept through exam centres. In all, nine out of 75 venues were affected. PQ magazine was inundated with calls and emails about the problems from students who wanted answers, and quite honestly had lost patience with the continual disruptions.
We asked ACCA for a meeting, and Claire Bennison and Leigh Currie came online to answer your questions. The first thing we have to say is that both Bennison and Currie genuinely stressed how disappointed they were about the experience of some UK sitters this June. They took on board both our and your criticisms, particularly of the continuing problems with the Monday set of exams.
Leigh explained that every system is rigorously checked and simulations are run over the weekend before the exams. Yet despite this there have been continual problems with the last three sittings. Additional tech has now been put in place. ACCA has been able to get to the bottom of the problems – be they power issues/shifts, hardware issues or internet connectivity. But this is of little comfort to those who put in all the hard work for this one day!
ACCA is taking onboard one of our suggestions immediately. They will be asking all exam centres to provide photographic evidence of the exam set-up before exams start. Bennison said that she was disappointed it had come to this, but it had “got to that point”. We had said students have to show the invigilators of the RI exams their room, so why shouldn’t the exam centres do the same for ACCA?
Read the full story and lots more feedback in the latest issue of PQ magazine: https://issuu.com/pqpublishing/docs/pq_0821
