ACCA exam nightmare

ACCA – making things better

PQ recently had an open and honest discussion with Claire Bennison, the head of ACCA UK, and Leigh Currie, director of Customer Service, about the problems June exam sittings

The June exams in the UK were hit with huge delays as technical issues swept through exam centres. In all, nine out of 75 venues were affected. PQ magazine was inundated with calls and emails about the problems from students who wanted answers, and quite honestly had lost patience.

We asked ACCA for a meeting and Claire Bennison and Leigh Currie came online to answer your questions. The first thing we have to say is that both Bennison and Currie genuinely stressed how disappointed they were about the experience of some UK sitters this June. They took on board both our and your criticisms, particularly of the continuing problems with the Monday set of exams.

Leigh explained that every system is rigorously checked and simulations are run over the weekend before the exams. Yet despite this there have been continual problems with the last three sittings. Additional tech has now been put in place. ACCA has been able to get to the bottom of the problems – be they power issues/ shifts, hardware issues or internet connectivity. But this is of little comfort to those who put in all the hard work for this one day!

ACCA is taking onboard one of our suggestions immediately. They will be asking all exam centres to provide photographic evidence of the exam set-up before exams start. Bennison said that she was disappointed it had come to this, but it had “got to that point”. We had said students have to show the invigilators of the RI exams their room, so why shouldn’t the exam centres do the same for ACCA?

Bennison also said there was a balance to be made between the number of centres and accessibility. There is a concern that students could end up with fewer venue options, increasing the cost to students and creating more pressure on exam day.

We asked about providing a free remote resit exam to students who had their exams cancelled, which happens at the lower levels as these exams run into the second week. Currently, ACCA does not have enough content for this, but they felt this was a good idea and promised to explore this as an option going forward.

We also felt that if this was not possible, then the affected June sitters should be given a free revision course for September, so they are not disadvantaged. Again, they promised to talk to their learning partners about this.

The pictures of the cabling at some centres shocked them and Currie said: “It’s disappointing they didn’t meet our standards.”

And we called for a totally refund of exam fees and a free resit for those students affected. Some only received a £30 discount if there was a slight delay (three hours).

Both Bennison and Currie wanted to explain how much their teams really care, and although it doesn’t change students’ situation, they will be working 24/7 to make things work better.