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Exam marking problems

Hi S&GMummy, I wouldn't recommend appealing. If you look at the success rates of appeals it's so small that the chances of you getting your mark upgraded make it not worth the money or time. I appealed a grade before and it was unsuccessful. My company paid for it but I spent weeks getting my hopes up and I found the whole process quite distracting and ultimately unrewarding. I also believe that a clear mistake would need to have been made for them to admit they incorrectly marked a paper. The process of awarding marks can be quite subjective in the later exams so I imagine the marker reviewing your paper will be on the IFoAs side and will not be looking for marks that will result in your mark being up-graded (even if half marks were missed). I would be more encouraging if the review was carried out by an independent body but that is not the case here. I will say that you are clearly there or there about's so you should get the exam next time with some additional work and perseverance. Best of luck!
 
Very few people got a formal appeal upheld under the previous rules, that is true. Nothing wrong with making complaints however, since they are a service provider.
 
I wouldn't appeal for the same reasons as entact. The chances of them changing the grade in your favour are almost zero, you will be £200 worse off, chances are you probably won't want to revise as hard u til you know the outcome of the appeal which means more wasting time. The only thing you can do is enrol for the next exam and try your hardest. If it's easy to do the SAR then do it and use the information coming out of that such as the marks you got per question and any notes by the examiner to see where you went wrong and improve upon.
 
Is a successful appeal known to anyone and why?

I bet many are put off making an appeal due to this £200 cost.
 
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Thanks for all your advices.

I personally did appeal before for CA2, that was few years ago, it was my second sitting, I got a FD for it. For my first sitting, I got a FB and wasn't able to finish the whole question, for my second sitting, I felt I was much more prepared, calm, etc. When I get the results, I felt that I have wasted 8 hrs, I could have sat there, wrote my name down, burned a CD and get a FD.

The institute reply saying the examiner marked me too harsh and I should have got a FB instead. They charged me and didn't change my grade on the system. I wrote a complaint saying if I got a FB instead of FD, I wouldn't even go through the appeal process and therefore even it was still a fail, I would consider that my appeal was successful. They never reply my email, but gave me my appeal fee back.

Apart from myself, I have never met another person who appealed before. So glad to know that @entact did try it too.

I am still considering whether to appeal or not, maybe I should submit a SAR, at least it is free comparing to an exam counselling report.
 
bannangio said:
To clarify this, my CA3 paper was not third marked, but reviewed by a third marker who added additional comments as to why he/she believed a fail was appropriate.

The comments (both from the first 2 markers and the reviewer) are very helpful – if I end up failing CA3 again I will probably do another SAR just for these comments.

The ‘adopted marks’ column in my SAR gave a mark to 1d.p. for each part question, e.g. 4.1, 6.5, 2.8 etc. I can’t see a committee going through multiple papers at that level of detail, so it would be interesting to hear from anyone else who has submitted an SAR for an SA subject and whether they have this column or not.

My feeling (with no evidence to back it up) is that some kind of formula or computer programme is applied to each marker’s marks to scale them up or down depending on how generous / strict a marker is.

I have tried backsolving for these scaling factors and it appears a different one is applied to each part question.

I suspect that use of the word ‘normalisation’ in the Institute’s correspondence with me was not an accident, and that the actual method for scaling marks involves fitting given marks to a normal distribution somehow.

If I fail again on Thursday I may go back for more details on the scaling method, but I’m not sure what information they would actually give me.
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In the present environment, all students who fail should be doing a SAR. The information you are entitled to receive is not only helpful for revision, possibly replicating many of the benefits of exam counselling for no charge, but allows you to know whether you are in the ever growing list of students who have not had their paper marked by the IFoA in line with their own marking procedure in force at the time you entered for the exam.

Regarding the adjustments applied to your marks, have you asked the ICO whether the IFoA were able to exclude how the adjustment was calculated in your Subject Access Request? The IFoA do not have a good track record in adhering to the Data Protection Act, so I would ask the ICO for their opinion. My suspicion is that the IFoA have to provide such data under the Data Protection Act.
almost_there said:
Having just read the student consultative forum notes for Nov 18, which have just been published on their website, it appears they don't really find anything wrong with anything, is the impression I get. They'll only concede and take action on minor points regarding exam timetables or minor technical issues.I think the SCF is a waste of time, just a place for them to direct complaints at to be left alone. Then they even filter out some complaints so they don't even get raised, such as the Q1 Nov 2016 CA3 issues I've raised. There appears to be no follow-up on the actions raised in previous meetings. Utterly pointless.
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almost_there said:
Having just read the student consultative forum notes for Nov 18, which have just been published on their website, it appears they don't really find anything wrong with anything, is the impression I get. They'll only concede and take action on minor points regarding exam timetables or minor technical issues.I think the SCF is a waste of time, just a place for them to direct complaints at to be left alone. Then they even filter out some complaints so they don't even get raised, such as the Q1 Nov 2016 CA3 issues I've raised. There appears to be no follow-up on the actions raised in previous meetings. Utterly pointless.
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I have to echo your experience here, the SCF do not advocate for and do not appropriately represent the student body. Every year I see their role on the website being watered down further and further, until now they are just described as a conduit for communicating to the IFoA.

I understand our rep ran student feedback for the last meeting by the IFoA for approval. The IFoA advised the rep to put the feedback aside, and the rep agreed and then refused to raise the student's feedback at the meeting last November. The IFoA are therefore filtering the questions that are raised at their own feedback meeting, and no-one on the SCF has a problem with this!

The SCF is not fit for purpose and needs to be reformed. Any students should therefore be raising their complaints directly to the IFoA until this changes.
 
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almost_there said:
To conclude, I believe that third marking should mean marking the ENTIRE SCRIPT. Page 70 student handbook states "scripts marked (1st and 2nd)", then "scripts marked (3rd)". Not scripts reviewed, not some questions remarked but "scripts marked" and this description is consistent between 1st, 2nd & 3rd. Whether they change that wording now, they can't go back in time and change their wording retrospectively so don't let them fob you off with moving the goalpost here since any change in wording doesn't apply until the next exams.

Clearly from the examples given & their admissions scripts have not been fully marked a third time as they should have.
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Hear hear! Any reasonable person would reach the same conclusion. Third marking means marking it a third time in the same way the first two markers did!

I also have to laugh at the IFoA insisting that learning about contract law forms part of CT9, where we are taught that a party can't amend the terms of a contract without the agreement of both parties once it is entered into. They then think we will believe them when they say they can retrospectively change the marking policy that formed part of our contract!

They have made a rod for their own back!
 
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S&GMummy said:
Dear all

I am new to this forum. I have just got the results from last Thursday, I failed SA2 (my last exam) by one mark, I have 61 and pass mark was 62.

I have already accepted the fact that I have failed, but many people around me, some being actuaries and some aren't, most think that I should appeal. What will you do if you were me?

Having read the this thread, if I am going to appeal, do I have enough ground? Or should I just raise a Subject Access Request straight away. I am very confused and hope you guys can help me. Thanks.
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Raise a Subject Access Request immediately. If it reveals grounds for appeal, then you can appeal within a reasonable period of time once the facts were known to you.
 
S&GMummy said:
Gavin, if I raise a SAR and not submit an appeal form at the same time, will they invalidate my appeal?
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S&GMummy: You can't raise an appeal until you have your SAR back, so I would suggest that you consider doing the SAR first. If the SAR reveals a marking process failure, then (and only then) do you have the facts available to you to raise an appeal. You should then have a reasonable period following the publication of your SAR to raise an appeal.

Others including myself have gone down the route of raising a formal complaint instead on the grounds of a breach of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 (which is free and should lead to the same outcome as an appeal). A link to Martin Lewis' helpful summary on the Act for consumers is given earlier in this thread.
 
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/consumer-rights-refunds-exchange#services

"Of course, things still go wrong and when they do, you've powerful protection from Part 1 Chapter 4 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015.

Quite simply, it demands that any service should be carried out with...

Reasonable care and skill,
Within a reasonable time,
At a reasonable price."

Failing to follow their own marking process published at the time you entered for the exam is a failure by the IFoA to act with reasonable care and skill in marking your exam paper. Therefore the IFoA must repeat the marking service, but this time do it properly (I.e. have it marked by a third person, not just reviewed) within a reasonable period of time at no charge to you.
 
One final matter, I am very pleased to note that this thread (despite only being a few months old) has been viewed over 4,000 times!

The message is getting out on how best to fight your corner against the IFoA, but please share this thread with your student colleagues as well to spread the word.
 
StudentActuary_02 said:
My rep ran my feedback for the last meeting by the IFoA for approval. The IFoA advised him to put it aside, and my rep agreed and then refused to raise my feedback at the meeting last November. The IFoA are therefore filtering the questions that are raised at their own feedback meeting, and no-one on the SCF has a problem with this!

The SCF is not fit for purpose and needs to be reformed. Any students should therefore be raising their complaints directly to the IFoA until this changes.
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That sounds totally rigged! Then again it's just another way to fob us off. Yes I agree bypass the SCF and deal with IFoA as a service provider.
 
StudentActuary_02 said:
I also have to laugh at the IFoA insisting that learning about contract law forms part of CT9, Where we are taught that a party can't amend the terms of a contract without the agreement of both parties once it is entered into. They then think we will believe them when they say they can retrospectively change the marking policy that formed part of our contract!

They have made a rod for their own back!
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:D:cool:
 
S&GMummy said:
I raised a SAR with the IFoA, its a waiting game now.
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Just to reiterate a point made earlier, also consider raising a formal complaint (which is free) if your SAR does reveal a marking process failure (e.g. no third mark on borderline or where significant discrepancy between marker 1&2). As far as I can see, both processes achieve the same thing, except with the formal complaint you are making a complaint to the IFoA as a service provider (which it clearly is by setting and marking exams), which gives you specific legal rights as laid out earlier.
 
Has anyone else heard back on their Subject Access Request and is now unsure about what their options are to progress this?
 
Has anyone referred this to the Financial Reporting Council and heard back? Each time I've passed things like this to their attention, including this matter, they've said "Not in our remit" essentially. They're meant to provide oversight of the IFoA but are as useful as a chocolate teapot. Nothing is ever in their remit. This means the IFoA are essentially unregulated on these matters, are left alone. This leaves no option for people other than to pursue these matters treating the IFoA as a service provider and exercising your consumer rights.
 
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Having failed ST2 by one mark in October 2016 I submitted a SAR.
The pass mark was 59 and the 2 markers gave me 119 (59.5%) and 118 (59%). I was therefore quite surprised to see that the 'adopted mark' awarded to me was 116.6 - lower than both markers.
I was also pretty surprised that my paper hadn't been marked by a third examiner.
Still waiting on a response to how they have given me a mark lower than both markers gave and why it wasn't marked a third time as I'd say I was on the borderline of passing!
 
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Sarah, that's a disgrace!!! :mad:
They can't get away with this anymore!!
 
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Sarah Keogh said:
Having failed ST2 by one mark in October 2016 I submitted a SAR.
The pass mark was 59 and the 2 markers gave me 119 (59.5%) and 118 (59%). I was therefore quite surprised to see that the 'adopted mark' awarded to me was 116.6 - lower than both markers.
I was also pretty surprised that my paper hadn't been marked by a third examiner.
Still waiting on a response to how they have given me a mark lower than both markers gave and why it wasn't marked a third time as I'd say I was on the borderline of passing!
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Hi Sarah

I'm sorry to hear about this, but well done for submitting a SAR and getting the evidence that shows the IFoA didn't mark your paper in line with their own marking policy.

I suspect you will need to raise a formal complaint on this matter in line with the path followed by others in this thread, and when you get fobbed off, be ready to promptly escalate your compaint to the next stage until you get a response from the top brass at the IFoA!

Very best of luck with your case.
 
Imagine if just one student managed to get say a small claims court to judge in favour of an exam fee refund due to failure to third mark. Others could then act similarly on this precedent, going back many years. That would be a serious hit in the pockets for the IFoA.

How far back has anyone done an SAR? It looks like you get more information from them nowadays compared to a few years ago. I'd be interested in making a retrospective SAR perhaps.
 
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