Cancelled exam - compensation? New exam this month?

Krystal_F

I am currently studying at college in the evenings and have completed level 1 in the subject (3 months) and am now studying level 2. It is a OCR 'certificate in' qualification rather than A-level etc.

Anyway, the course consists of 2 assignments in class, and one exam. Assignment one has been completed, and the exam was to be this morning, in the exam hall. Yesterday evening i arrived home from work to find a letter

"due to an administrative error Wednesdays exam has been cancelled"

No explaination, no apology. We all arrived at this evenings lesson to get answers and it is still unknown if the college ever entered us, or the exam board just didn't send the papers.

We (30+) are all so angry as we now cannot take the exam till June, (as exams can only be sat in Jan/March/Dec) but our course should be finished by the end of April. I was looking to seek employment with this new qualification asap, but now will not receive any certificates until Sept. Also if any of us fail we cannot re-take until Dec!!:mad:

It is really unfair as many of us are mothers trying to better ourselves for the sake of our children and cannot get better jobs, or even sign up to further education without these certificates!

On top of that many of us took days off work for the exam, and by receiving less than 24hrs notice could not change our arrangements

Any ideas of where we stand? Can we get the exam board to let us take the exam this month? Get any compensation?

Any ideas please help!!

System

Contact the admin office and demand an explaination. Are you paying for this exam/classes? If you're not, then unless you've applied for uni/further education and this will affect your acceptance, then I don't think compensation can be offered.

You only have to wait 3 further months, if you can prove that a job offer (which depended upon this exam) was on the table for before then, then you may be able to claim compensation for 3 months lost work.

These courses don't guarantee you a higher paying job than you can get now, or a job at all for that matter. Not only this, but as these are evening classes, and you are already a level 1, you should be working full time anyway. I'm not sure what course you're doing, so unsure of whether moving from level 1 to 2 will make much of a difference when it comes to job prospects?

That said, your college may be able to pull some strings with the exam board and get the exams marked faster.

Krystal_F

Many thanx for your reply,
The level 1 course was Book-keeping, level 2 is Further Book-keeping and Accounts. This qualification should mean a pay change from minimum wage to £7 - £9 .

I had to take the evening before and the day of the exam off of work, and another student who runs their own business had to hire someone to take their place.

Each level of the course costs approx. £500.

My main question is can OCR let exams be taken outside the specified months in special circumstances?

CrispyUK

I would imagine the answer to that is no, the exam papers for yesterdays exam are now potentially 'out in the open' and couldn't be used again for official assessments.

System

Krystal_F wrote: »

My main question is can OCR let exams be taken outside the specified months in special circumstances?

As far as I know, no. That would involve quickly putting together another examination paper (which usually takes months), which I cannot see an exam board doing for only 30 students. But they may be able to get the results back to you faster when you come to taking it in June.

If this is the colleges fault, you should demand at least partial compensation, seeing as you paid £500 for this course ... and it means you'll have to spend time re-revising the course again for the June exam.