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Hello everyone,
Sadly, last night I received an email from ACCA confirming they will not be able to proceed with center based exams in the UK during December 2020 session due to Covid-19 restrictions.
I had a look at their remote exams timetable and found out that exams will be carried out throughout two weeks (7th Dec to 18th Dec).
I am taking FR which was originally booked for 10th December but now I have an option to change it to 17th December which would give me additional week to prepare.
Do you think it would be a good idea to delay the exam by one week? It is tempting but at the same time I am a bit concerned as ACCA might make the exam more difficult or knock a few marks off as other students will be taking the exam a week earlier and share the questions which from ACCA’s point of view would mean that students taking the exam a week later would potentially have unfair advantage.
Please advise.
Thank you
FIRST – as at today – NOT ALL center-based exams have been cancelled. Only those at the following test locations have been are confirmed:
Aberdeen (Station Hotel test centre only), Bournemouth, Bristol (Arnos Hotel test centre only), Chelmsford (County Hotel test centre only), Inverness, Norwich, Reading, Stevenage, Swansea (Grand Hotel test centre only), Truro, Watford.
(Source: https://www.accaglobal.com/uk/en/student/exam-entry-and-administration/covid-19-exam-availability.html accessed 11 November 10:55am)The exams are already written (some time ago) so NO – they will not be any more or less difficult depending on when they are sat. Also NO – markers are professionals – neither they, nor the ACCA, would “knock a few marks off”.
Hi Kim,
I wanted to edit my post specifying that exams were cancelled in my location and not the whole of the UK, but this forum does not allow to do that. I apologise if I caused panic to anyone.
However, information on ACCA website is not 100% correct – I was meant to take my exam in Chelmsford, Anglia Ruskin university, and it got cancelled. Meanwhile, on ACCA website it says that only County Hotel test centre got cancelled.
ACCA has unspoken policy to mark borderline exams twice (for students that got 50-52 marks) and if the marker thinks that the student made a ‘critical error’, they purposefully fail the student by marking it down to 49. This does not sound very professional to me, so based on that I would not be surprised if they had a similar procedure in place when it comes to remote exams.
My exam in Stevenage is canceled, but no remote exam booking is available. The test-center deadline has passed two days ago. Looks like March then?
@medstar – no problem re post – it provided me with an opportunity to remind readers that they should keep an eye on the website – of course they should expect formal confirmation in an e-mail and should therefore make sure that their contact details are up-to-date in myACCA and that their e-mail does not spam/junk communications from ACCA.
I do not know where you get your “unspoken policy” from but I was an ACCA examiner for seven years and during that time was responsible for a team of 40 markers. All marginal fail scripts are subject to at least 2nd marking – there is no marking down if a pass is achieved on first marking. After 2nd marking – an example of a consideration of whether a 49 could be 50 is whether a candidate has attempted all Qs and all parts of all Qs – this is a matter of fact. If a candidate has not attempted a 15-mark question, say, is that “as good” as a candidate who attempted all Qs as required? I suggest not – either they didn’t study/revise sufficiently and lacked knowledge/understanding of the omitted Q – or they lacked time management skills – either way, they lacked something (!)
And another point – scripts are delivered anonymously to markers – they do not know from which centre they come and similarly will not know if they were sat in a centre or remotely – nor will a marker know if a candidate is first-time or a resit – this eliminates the risk of unconscious bias.
boychenkove wrote:My exam in Stevenage is canceled, but no remote exam booking is available. The test-center deadline has passed two days ago. Looks like March then?
Chelmsford (Anglian Ruskin University and County Hotel test centres only)
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