What do you think about last week's announcement to publish pass marks and give students their individual mark (pass or fail)?
It's transparent. But doesn't make much difference if you pass and some will still be aggrieved on what would otherwise have been an FA.
Is it really transparent? Suppose that the paper set is really hard and so the examiners decide to lower the pass mark. This would not look good if a professional exam has, say a pass mark of 50%. So they'd presumably keep the published pass mark at 60% and then scale the students marks before publication....
Any pass mark is a function of difficulty. Needs to be looked at in relation to pass rate as well so I disagree showing a pass mark of say 50% is a bad thing. Think the profession has better things to do than manipulate results. My understanding is that the intent is the pass mark shouldn't wildly vary and I guess that comes about through the Guinea pig process. We have to give the regime a chance to bed in. Hopefully you won't care because you are on the pass list. Students have been lobbying for marks for years. No system is perfect fit for everyone.
Transparent doesn't mean meaningful. Marks, pass rates etc for different exams are bound to be different (hopefully not significantly so). As for pass marks of about 50%, I shudder at thinking about how the surgeon/pilot/________ could have qualified by getting nearly half wrong on his exams. Hopefully, his real life proficiency at surgery/flying planes has a much smaller mistake rate. I know it is what it is and understand it, but publicizing pass marks may make more people think along these lines. I don't know how many want to know they passed by 1 mark or 20 marks, even though it may have no real world difference. Do students want the exam sponsor to know this? When all you need is a pass, you could find better things to do than putting in more effort to get 80% instead of targeting 70%. Students have been asking for their marks for years, so I guess we wait and see how it pans out.
It will be very interesting to know how many companies will ask their students their marks. It certainly may make a difference to them if they have someone who fails and is at risk of falling off a program. But I agree, just focus efforts on doing everything to pass and don't get hung up on marks. Each paper will still present its own challenge - that won't change
Muppet - Where do I find the article on the decision to publish pass marks? Didster - having sat pilot exams previously; their pass mark was around 75% and all of the written exams were multiple choice too hope that eases your stomach slightly.
For those who have sat CT exams previously - what do you think the approx pass mark is for these exams? I've read various posters say around 60%, is this correct? It's great that pass marks are being released from April onwards, more transparency
There is a site called actuarial-lookup that has a lot of analysis on the exams and their pass rates. You can see all the historical pass rates for all exams (since 2007) here: http://actuarial-lookup.co.uk/analytics/query1 Query 3 also shows some pass rate analysis by exam category. http://actuarial-lookup.co.uk/analytics/query3 Here are the historical average pass rates: CT exams: 58.0% CA exams:45.4% ST exams: 41.8% SA exams: 39.3% UK Practice Modules: 68.1% Of course these are pass rates and not pass marks but I'm sure this site will begin tracking pass marks too, once they are released.
So did anyone who got their CT results last week find this useful? I was surprised to see a pass mark of 60% across he board (other than CT4), I am sure I have passed with much lower scores on some of those exams in the past.
now you can ask for subject access requests and see that there is a 33% difference between the scores you have been awarded by three independent markers
