I was awarded 74 and 50.5 is it not a real issue?
As far as I am aware I don't think they have a policy written down. Maybe worth asking the profession, although in my experience I have had to wait weeks before getting an answer.
Would people who do actuary exams at Uni already have this route available to them? I'm guessing they would?
I'm 100% with you on this luckcounts they need to be externally accountable. It seems the FRC are completely useless in this regard. There seems to be a lot of time / money being wasted obsessing about improving TAS and so on, when pretty much every actuary out there vastly exceed those standards anyway. It's on the IFoA itself the FRC should focus its attention, on the matters raised here.
It may be though that it takes a long time to resolve and as unpalatable as resits are, it may be quicker to resit and pass than go complaint route.
Or you could try the alternative "putting things right" process using an ET1.. That might speed things up slightly.There's something massively wrong for that to be the case. The IFoA CEO is extremely highly paid and should be carrying out the "putting things right" process according to its timescales i.e. to resolve complaints within 5 weeks.
As far as I am aware I don't think they have a policy written down.
If some markers are not doing their jobs correctly surely there must be something we can do? The final review by 3rd marker only seems to be random questions too even when they see the problems with marking. It all seems a mess to me! I don't agree with litigation but I'd love to see the exams marked correctly.
This is an interesting conversation, and I would like to thank ActuaryStudent9123116 for raising this issue and StudentActuary_02 and almost_there for their helpful points.
I sat SA4 in April 2016 and was given a mark of 55 (pass mark was 59).
I was surprised, as I thought I had done enough to pass, and decided to appeal on the basis of a procedural irregularity (this was before you needed evidence to do so - although who knows how you are supposed to get evidence these days in the 15 days needed to submit an appeal, when an SAR takes 40 days to come through).
Obviously, my appeal failed and my mark of 55 was maintained.
A few months later I came across this topic and decided to submit an SAR for my SA4 results and all internal correspondence relating to my exam sitting and appeal, primarily to find out which question I did so badly on that I failed.
This turned up some interesting results: Marker 1 had awarded me 62 marks (i.e. a pass) and Marker 2 had awarded me 60 marks (i.e. also a pass).
However, there was a third column titled ‘adopted mark’, which summed to 55.2 (i.e. a fail), and which is the mark I was given for my paper.
I went back to the Institute and asked them to double-check the information they provided, as I believed they had either provided me with the wrong person’s marks, or that I had uncovered some kind of mistake in the averaging of my marks.
The Institute have now responded and let me know that my marks were ‘normalised’ in order to ensure discrepancies between markers do not unfairly disadvantage students.
The have also confirmed that my ‘normalised mark’ was reviewed by senior examiners and deemed appropriate, although no evidence of this was provided as part of my initial SAR.
I’m not sure where to go from this to be honest (probably nowhere if I pass it on Thursday!) but thought this tale might be of interest to others.
In the interests of balance, it is worth mentioning that I also failed CA3 and included this in my SAR. One marker passed me (just) and the other gave me a fail. The two marks were averaged (to a fail), and then my script was reviewed by a third actuary who confirmed that taken as a whole, a fail was appropriate.
I would disagree! If everyone who fails starts doing this for feeling a bit sore from failing then it's going to damage the credibility of anyone who might have a genuine complaint! I would also guess if any positive action does come from this it'll be in the form of a tightened process around a 3rd marking with little to no change to pass rates so I doubt there would be a large number of cases it would make a difference at all! I certainly wouldn't expect any retrospective passes issued. I'd focus more on passing the next sitting than spending too much time on a perceived injustice from the last sitting. At the end of the day, everybody is subject to the same process.
Can anyone help me how to do a SAR?
Thanking you in anticipation.
Perhaps those who are marking are trying to give something back to the profession? I fail to see why actuaries wouldn't be qualified to mark a paper. They have to pass an assessment before being allowed to mark, have a two stage process for marking prior to marking live scripts and receive feedback at the end of the exam period. Who would you like to mark the papers?The marker remuneration is much less than what a qualified actuary can charge per hour. Reasonable to query also whether actuaries are qualified to mark papers...
You said it's reasonable to query whether actuaries may mark papers. So explain why?Looks like a system built on the cheap with no serious handling of complaints at all. You tell us why actuaries are qualified to do this given you know so much about the process...