The following communication with regards to recent examination issues was sent to all UK CII members on Tuesday 27th October. If you have any queries with regards to the current examination process then please contact your Regional Membership Manager.
We wish to sincerely apologise for the issues that some Chartered Insurance Institute examination candidates have experienced since March 2020.
The relationship we have with our learners and members is extremely important to us and we constantly strive to support candidates and members with everything they need to keep their learning up to date and their career on track.
Our job is to make the sitting of exams as seamless and stress free as possible during an inevitably tense time and letting down even one student in that regard is not acceptable to us. We understand the significant distress the exam issues have caused and deeply regret that this has happened.
When the Covid-19 pandemic struck in March we knew we must find a way for our candidates to continue their studies and sit their exams, especially where this is a licence to practise.
In January 2020 we had moved to a new assessment centre and remote invigilation supplier, PSI. PSI is globally recognised as being able to allow exams to be sat 24/7/365 days a year, across the world, via centres and online.
Knowing that, at that stage, the only way to provide an exam offer was by remote invigilation we brought forward work to deliver exams remotely and on-screen with the CII’s new assessment centre and remote invigilation provider PSI.
After July did not go as well as we had wished, and we received candidate feedback of all of the remote invigilation issues, we focused on providing a mainly centre assessment offer for October; but some technical and logistical issues were encountered.
The operational challenges of providing a full exam service whilst adhering to all local COVID guidelines are significant; with a large number of centres completely closed and those that are open, very restricted from a capacity perspective. But PSI and CII remain fully committed to enabling all candidates who wish to sit an exam, the opportunity to do it, safely.
While the majority of CII’s 18,500 July and October exam sittings since March have completed without incident, we are acutely aware of unacceptable instances where there were problems in accessing remote invigilation sessions, accessing preferred exam centres and a series of technical issues during sittings.
We recognise these issues have caused 850 students significant stress and disruption, for which we are extremely sorry.
Any candidate who feels they have been negatively impacted through this period has had the option to request that special consideration be taken into account during marking. Any candidate failing their exam is being offered a free resit, a free new enrolment (if required) and a free revision session. All candidates impacted have been asked to contact complaints@cii.co.uk.
I want to reassure you that we are working closely with PSI to resolve all the issues encountered by candidates since March, to ensure everyone who is assessed by the CII in the future has the best experience possible.
We appreciate your patience while we work to improve the way we deliver exams and assessments, and we continue to welcome your feedback on what more we can do to improve the experience for candidates. Please send me your feedback, which will help improve the delivery of CII examinations in the future, to Gill.white@cii.co.uk.
Thank you for your patience and understanding.
Gill White
Chief Customer Officer