CP2 Paper 2 Exam Issues

Hello Viki,

Be it for mitigating circumstances or online incident form, the IFoA has not got back to me to indicate any outcome or further escalation. I have sent them a mail and a reminder mail, but no response.

 

Hi Viki, I think there have been issues historically. Typically the will just refer to issues in the examiner's report, post results being released. My CP3 exam had a number of issues with the original paper so they had to reissue it. I submitted a mitigating circumstance form but never received any wording. The issues were referenced in the examiner report however no adjustment was made to pass mark as it wasn't felt the errors were significant.

I wouldn't expect to receive an individual reply or anything before results are released. Fingers crossed for you for exam results day

 

Hello,
I called the IFoA today with regards to both the online disruption form and the mitigating circumstances form. I was apprised that today the board of examiners for CP2 is being done and that any form regarding the Excel problem has been escalated to them. Based on this, if the BoE finds out that there was effectively a mistake which impacted the performance of candidates, there would be a global adjustment, such as reduction of pass marks in order to be fair to candidates. However, the policy for mitigating circumstances stays the same, after the pass mark has been decided by the BoE, if and only if one is within 3 marks of the pass mark, the case would be escalated to the committee to decide whether he/she would be awarded pass mark or failed. If this is the case, a mail will be received within five working days following publication of results to know the outcome of the mitigating circumstance. If one is outside those range of marks, the form will not be considered and no email will be received from the IFoA. In any way, based on the pass mark and one's mark (from result letter), one would eventually know whether he/she should be expecting a mail regarding the mitigating circumstance form. This is what the Assessment Team told me.

 

Will IFOA communicate anything about the error in the spreadsheet and adjustment for the pass marks?

 

What I've been told - everything would be communicated on their website and the examiner's report.

 

Hi Viki, https://www.actuaries.org.uk/news-and-insights/news/cp3-september-2018-examination was a link to an adjustment to pass marks for CP3. Obviously any applied adjustment will depend on how significant Board of Examiners believe the error to be. At the very least, would expect it to be mentioned in the Examiners' Report for the subject. Good luck for results day

 

Just hope they are fair enough when reducing the pass mark as it took me one hour to realise that it's their mistake!

 

From memory, for CP3 the reduction of pass mark was only 2 marks while the paper was sent to people 20 mins late. In 20 mins you are expected to earn more than 2 marks, so I wouldn't see that adjustment to be accurate. I am not hoping for much for CP2.

 

I'm a bit shocked that there is no adjustment for the pass mark of 60, given the issues with paper 2 spreadsheet.

 

This is all we get for the errors in the paper 2 spreadsheet provided to 1200 students sitting this exam: "On the ‘Model for candidate’ spreadsheet provided, on the ‘parameters’ worksheet, alongside the cell for each parameter, the parameter name was given in red text. It was indicated that the LS proposal uptake rate cell (C13) had the parameter name ‘Lump_sum_take_up_rate’. This was not however the case, in fact it had been named ‘Enhanced_Transfer_Value_uptake_rate’. This parameter was not used in the ‘Model for candidate’ spreadsheet, however it would be reasonable to assume that students used this parameter within their work. It is possible that this misnaming may have caused some candidates some confusion. Candidates were awarded marks irrespective of which parameter name was used in their modelling. The criteria for reviewing borderline cases was expanded to capture additional scripts for review. In undertaking these reviews examiners were generous in awarding marks so as to compensate for any potential lost time this issue may have caused."