Coronavirus effect on exams

Purely speculative but I reckon they might be spreading the "clashing" exams out to avoid the system breaking, they can use the gaps in the timetable created by the cancellation of the CM/CS exams

 

How is this fair for anyone who was planning to sit the cancelled examinations? Through no fault of their own they have lost out on an opportunity to sit these exams because the ifoa could not facilitate having the exams online!? I have always had my opinions about the Ifoa and on how they operate but this has really pee’ed me off!

 

I imagine they cant be moving exams forward. That would be crazy if so. Especially so soon to exams...

 

Will the written exams be the same as the one that we will be supposed to take in the centres? And if it will affect the passing mark or difficulty of the paper?

 

This is crazy - SP6 for example is maybe 60% calculations and algebra, any exam they set will be completely different to what has come before. Most people I know haven't studied for the last couple of weeks. I've heard of companies stopping study days on the assumption exams will be postponed. What a joke.

 

Maybe the IFoA are assuming large numbers will cancel of their own accord, and so the online platform will work for their speculative reduced numbers?

 

Will the exam be changed to an open book style?

 

HERE IS THE LINK:

https://www.actuaries.org.uk/studyi...date-covid19-students-booked-april-2020-exams

 

Don't understand why people are saying this is a joke. "Candidates now have the following options." - the IFoA are not forcing you to sit your exams in this sitting, but simply giving you the option which aligns with your personal circumstances. If they can actually pull off the online exams without any technical issues then in my eyes this is the optimal solution.

 

They're not affording the option to do exams to everyone though

 

That's why there are saying hardware and software requirements. Also, the timetable will be moved into May or early June (my speculation, not a declaration by the institute).

 

Thing is though, your going to have people who will have done nothing and now have fair chance of passing as there will be ways to cheat. vs somone who has spent months studying, and may not want to cheat

 

How is it not a joke?
I'm personally sitting the cancelled exams, so infact i don't get to sit my exams at all?
Whereas if I was fortunate enough to select a different route, I would infact be able to sit exams?

Surely somewhere in the moral of all this is fairness, or is this missed here?

 

Webcam system will be applicable for these papers as well from september 2020 examination diet. I have inside news and am 100% sure about this.

 

I think the papers will probably be write on paper and scan , instead of typed out (maybe a choice of the two, or even a combination ? )
CB2 involves some graph drawing , SP6 is quite maths heavy

They probably cancelled the CM , CS series because of the large number of candidates and the two paper aspect of the subjects

 

This decision was made because these papers already have an online element of their own, and also need significant mathematical calculations. Also, there are huge number of students sitting these exams which makes it difficult to accommodate everyone onto the online platform. So to keep it fair for all students giving these papers, they chose to cancel the paper itself.

 

No way

 

On the webcam issue, what about poor internet connection during the 3 hour exam? How will that be done?

 

Ok if say we need printers or webcam - would they not advise people now - before countries go into lockdown - i doubt for instance in certain countries a computer shop is an essential shop - so may not even have access to it next week.

software - i'm guessing is word and excel
hardware - they may request wired internet connection, non mac pc
other requirements would be to sign a declaration that you wont' cheat

 

I took the "revised timetable" to mean potentially slightly different slots within the 2-week period, not a wholescale postponement of the April 2020 diet. I could be totally wrong but I'm still expecting exams to kick-off in mid-April.

 

Still renders the effort put in by these students almost redundant as they'll have such a gap between starting to cover this material and actually sitting the paper. Wouldn't have been difficult to allow CM1/2 and CS1/2 candidates to upload written solutions and complete the online paper as per the normal process