The Chartered Institute of Taxation and sister body the Association of Tax Technicians have said its online November 2020 exams will not be invigilated and will be open book.
Both bodies have stressed this is due to the current pandemic, rather than any change to its exams.
Students have been reminded that they are bound by the CIOT/ATT ethics guidelines, and must behave in the appropriate manner as a tax professional, act with integrity, receive no external assistance, and sit the exam in a room alone.
The move follows the evaluation of the remotely invigilated June/July sitting of the CTA application and professional skills, and ATT paper 4 exams. The two bodies decided “it is not appropriate to use the same software product for the full November exam session”. The honest appraisal was that the experience of candidates sitting the first remotely invigilated emergency summer session was too variable.
So, both are using the Exam4 software for their November sessions. The Exam4 app has been successfully used for many years for the ADIT (Advanced Diploma in International Tax) exams.
Exam4 will allow candidates to type their answers using your own laptop or desktop computer and the app is compatible with both Windows and Mac. It is essentially a word processor which the sitter can use to type and securely submit your answers at the end of the exam. It will lockdown the computer, and although you need WiFi to submit your answers you don’t need to be connected during the exam. Exam4 will also automatically backup the work as the candidate types.
Moving forward the CIOT and ATT said all its exams will be conducted remotely for 2021, and it will not be returning to exam halls.
