25 January 2021
Congratulations to all our candidates, who passed examinations in the September 2020 session. This is a fantastic achievement in unprecedented global circumstances, which makes your success even more remarkable.
As we complete our September 2020 examination cycle we would like to share an overview of this session and how your feedback will enable us to deliver an enhanced candidate experience going forward.
We were delighted to have introduced a number of improvements to our communications and examination processes for September following your feedback on our April examinations. We were able to implement email confirmation of successful script uploads, which was a major request from candidates in previous examination sessions.
We also introduced a new process so that candidates experiencing difficulty uploading answer scripts were able to contact our Education Services team and request permission to email in their scripts. Not many candidates required this facility in September, but it significantly enhanced these candidates' examination experience. The security and integrity of our examinations is also important to both candidates and employers, so we introduced two-factor authentication, enhancing security and help protect against identity fraud.
This September’s examination session was the first where we were able to offer our entire suite of examinations online, with CS and CM examinations open to IFoA members. Around 10,900 individual candidates sat our September examinations with over 22,800 scripts uploaded onto our online examination platform. The platform continues to perform well with 99% of candidates able to successfully download their exam papers.
Examination results were released to candidates through their IFoA website accounts on the 15 and 17 December as planned. The IFoA website performed well during this process and there were no significant issues with candidates accessing their individual exam results.
We also shared bespoke electronic pass lists with over 56 employers, where we have a formal agreement and candidate permission in place. This enabled successful candidates to receive speedy recognition of passes by their employers.
The Board of Examiners have concluded that both the pass marks and pass rates for September’s online examinations both remained within the normal range, demonstrating consistent standards with our previous exam centre based examinations.
Inappropriate Examination Conduct
In order to maintain the integrity of our examinations, the IFoA uses a range of measures to identify inappropriate examination conduct such as plagiarism and collusion, including the use of proprietary plagiarism software.
Examiners were pleased to note that even more candidates followed our advice on plagiarism than in the April examination session. Over 99% of candidate scripts caused no concern following review by the software, exam markers, Education Actuaries and Examiners, an improvement on the figure of 97% for our April examinations. The majority of cases related to plagiarism, with candidates found to have behaved inappropriately receiving sanctions ranging from formal warnings to disqualification from September 2020 examinations, and, in a small number of cases, a 24 month ban from sitting our examinations.
While have made improvements in our guidance on how to approach open book exams as a result of your feedback, we would welcome any additional feedback on how we can offer further clarity. Please contact quality@actuaries.org.uk with your suggestions.
We will also be publishing an article covering how we investigate alleged plagiarism and collusion once we have formally concluded our Inappropriate Examination Conduct investigations, which we hope candidates will find useful.
Inappropriate Professional Conduct
Prior to the September 2020 session our online security systems detected attempts by a very small number of candidates to access examination papers early in order to gain a material advantage over other candidates. These attempts were unsuccessful and the integrity of all our papers were maintained. However such attempts represent a significant lapse in professional judgement with wider implications for these individuals’ professional integrity. They have therefore been referred to the IFoA’s Disciplinary process – the most significant sanction for such behaviour.
Some candidates also managed to access their own individual results online shortly before the formal release of results. This did not represent a data breach nor result from any significant security issue with the IFoA’s systems. The opportunity for candidates to access their own results before their formal release - which was shared by individuals on social media - was blocked as soon as the issue was identified. It will not occur during future sessions. Despite these candidates gaining no material advantage related to their actual results, their behaviour does represent a significant lapse in professional judgement. We have a full record of the individuals involved, and will be specifically reviewing their behaviour during future exam sessions.
Candidate feedback
Feedback about your experience during our September examination session has been central to improving the way we will deliver our online examinations in 2021.
Over 3,500 students completed our September post-examination survey, which remains a high response rate compared with previous exam sessions. We would like to thank everyone who took the time to complete this survey and all those who fed back through the Student Consultative Forum (SCF) and Global Student Consultative Forums (GSCF).
Survey results
We are pleased to note that candidates reported an overwhelming positive experience with our online exam platform during the September examination session. The vast majority experienced no issues with platform testing prior to the exams, alongside a smooth experience in downloading and uploading scripts.
We recognise that your exam files were downloaded in a ZIP folder during exams, however, this was not the format during the pre-exam platform test. We are updating our guidance for the April 2021 session to ensure candidates are aware of the full technical requirements.
A recurring feedback topic was on the experience of the CS and CM ‘A’ papers and writing numerical and equation answers in Microsoft Word. Many candidates expressed a preference to be able to handwrite the answers and attach to their exam paper as a scan or PDF. Currently, this is not possible, however we have heard your feedback and are developing our examination papers so that they are best-optimised for keyboard entry.
Headline figures from respondents for the September 2020 post-examination survey include:
- 99% were able to test the platform.
- 98% of candidates found the two factor authentication easy to use
- 97% reported the online platform was easy to use.
- 97% found no issues in downloading their exam paper.
- 96% were able to upload their paper without issue.
- 93% understood the technical requirements for the exams.
- 99% of candidates received confirmation their paper was uploaded
- 93% of candidates understood the arrangements for the September exam sitting
- 88.6% of candidates felt the IFoA kept them informed of developments leading up to the exam session.
- 80% of candidates felt our information was presented clearly on the website.
- 91% of candidates felt we provided all the information required for the exams via email ahead of the exam session.
You can find more about the candidate feedback and actions we have taken to improve our candidates’ experience in our Student feedback on our April examinations article.
You can also read the full results from our April post-examination survey and notes from our most recent latest UK & Ireland SCF and Global Student Forum meetings (GSCF).
Communication improvements
We continue to listen to your and your employers’ feedback to improve the experience of sitting IFoA examinations.
In response to your feedback we have made improvements to the way we communicate key information about your examinations, creating an Exams Handbook to provide a single, central source of information about preparing for and sitting IFoA examinations.
The handbook includes information on areas where candidates have requested clear guidance; including preparing for open book examinations and the use of a range of hardware and software during examinations.
Your views are important to us, enabling us to continually improve the support and services we provide for all our candidates. Please help us to improve by completing our student and post-examination surveys and feeding back you views through your local Student Consultative Forum (SCF) representatives.