10 July 2020
The College held its first online examination yesterday with 185 candidates sitting the FRCEM Final SAQ examination.
Despite the concerted efforts of our Examinations Team and our suppliers, a small number of candidates experienced connectivity issues during the online sitting. Arrangements have been made for these candidates to complete the examination today.
We have also received reports of candidates experiencing ‘time lags’ when typing their answers via the OnVUE system. A review of the performance of all candidates, for all questions, will be conducted prior to release of results to ensure a robust, quality assured and fair examination is delivered. As part of the quality assurance procedure the College will undertake statistical analysis and evaluation of examination results to monitor fairness and ensure that no candidate was disadvantaged by the delivery of the examination.
Given that only a small number have been affected and to avoid identifying any of the individual candidates involved, we will not be providing further details of the review process.
College CEO Gordon Miles said: “Faced with the restrictions brought by the pandemic we have undertaken an extremely fast implementation of an online examination system to enable as many trainees as possible to complete their training. There is always risk involved in changing systems. We have worked very hard to identify and mitigate the risks involved. We are sorry that some candidates did not have the experience we and they expected. We are investigating the issues with our suppliers to learn from the experience and have moved quickly to offer a solution that maintains the integrity of the online examinations whilst enabling the candidates to sit.”
