We apologise once again to those candidates who were affected by this technical issue during their AKP exam last month. We are aware this has been a difficult experience for all candidates.
We are continuing to investigate the degree of issue with the system and all processes involved.
We are working closely with the supplier to ensure this cannot happen in future, and will publish the exact steps we are taking with our supplier to prevent this on the website once we have them.
We have now received all information requested about test centres and their approaches from our supplier. We have also investigated any specific concerns raised by candidates. From this, we have concluded that all centres have been able to maintain exam conditions whilst candidates were able to access their exam.
All candidate results have been submitted to us. For some candidates, these results consist of a full set of AKP results as they have:
- submitted the exam without technical issue
- re-took the exam on the day
- answered all questions without being able to submit – these results have been automatically submitted to us.
For other candidates, these results consist of part of the exam as they were unable to continue due to the technical error.
We are analysing all candidate results, including full sets of candidate results and incomplete results. We are taking this approach to ensure that no candidate is disadvantaged through having already met the pass mark even if their set of results is incomplete.
All candidates will therefore receive a pass or fail result. We are aware that some fail results will be due to technical error preventing completion or undue stress affecting performance. Our system can only record pass or fail. As such, we will offer all candidates receiving a failing result one of the following options:
- Free resit at the next AKP exam on 18 January 2023, or
- Free resit at the second next AKP exam on 17 May 2023, or
- 100% refund.
This exam sitting will not count towards candidates’ total tally of AKP attempts.
Next steps and action for candidates
We are currently on track to release results as planned – in the week commencing 31 October. For candidates who have failed, we will ensure a priority application window for the resit diet of their choice. For the January 2023 sitting, the priority application window will be from Thursday 3 November until Sunday 6 November. From Monday 7 November until Monday 21 November the application window is open for all candidates as per usual. You will still be able to book a free place during that time, but the place in the test centre of your choice may not be available. Alternatively, you will be able to book onto online invigilation.
We will be in contact with further instructions for those who have failed once results have been determined.
We recognise that during this period we have not been responding back to individual emails. We thank you again for your patience here – this issue impacted almost 500 people to some level and we need to ensure we use our staff resource to keep pressure upon our supplier to provide us with all the information we need to both (a) resolve the consequences of the September examination and (b) ensure their system does not cause a similar issue again.
For more details, see the FAQs first posted on 22 September.