SCF
Update From SCF - 27 November

Link: Notes of the Meeting of the Student Consultative Forum held on Friday, 27 November 2009 at Staple Inn Hall 

Thanks to those of you who provided feedback ahead of the Actuarial Profession’s Student Consultative Forum meeting on 27 November. I raised all your comments at the meeting.

Please find attached draft minutes from the meeting. These will also be available on the FASS website. Here are some particular points worth noting and answers which are in response to your comments and questions:

Admin Aspects

  • Exam Entry Permits: From April 2010, these will include details of the reading time, as well as exam start and end time. The confusion surrounding the most recent CA3 exam has been reported to the examiners.
  • Invigilators’ conduct: There will be an Invigilators Training Day early in the new year. This will stress that they should not create a distraction and should be attentive for students requiring assistance (e.g. extra paper).
  • Cost of CT9: This is run at cost price and has not increased in price in recent years. The Registrar is reviewing external suppliers and arrangements to see if costs can be reduced whilst still maintaining good feedback from participates. In particular, they are trialling removing the requirement to stay overnight.
  • Practice Module: This isn’t necessary to qualify however it is currently required as part of the Practice Certificate regime for reserved roles (but this may be reviewed soon).
  • CT9 and Practice Module online tests: New software for these is due to go live in Jan/Feb 2010. This will allow takers to go back and forward between questions and change answers, enabling better time management.

Educational Content

  • All comments regarding specific papers and questions are passed on to the relevant Principal Examiner, so it’s worth making them. However, the profession’s representatives are far less willing to compromise on these issues than on the admin-type stuff above.
  • Notwithstanding this, they did agree with comments that the recent CT8 paper was difficult, and said this was taking into account in the marking process.

Other points of potential interest

  • Student Voting Rights: There was strong feeling from student reps that students should have a say in decisions affecting the future of the profession. However, the current constitutions clearly state that, unfortunately, we do not get a vote. The Forum did agree to press the Joint Councils on this issue, with a view of getting a change made when the current constitutions are updated (e.g. if/when a merger takes place). If successful, this would ensure that in future such decisions, students would be able to vote.
  • Review of Fail Grades: This has been conducted and will be implemented from the April 2010 results onwards. The objective is to provide grades that are more “informative”. The FA band will be narrowed (e.g. receiving an FA would mean you were extremely close to a Pass); the FB and FC grades would both be broadened; and a FD would indicate an “extremely poor” attempt. It was suggested that the bands be relabelled as F1, …, F4 to draw attention to the change and to prevent direct comparison between the two methodologies.
  • CA2/CA3 – New criteria: From July 2010, to sit CA2 we will have to have passed/be exempted from all the CTs (including CT9). A similar criteria already applies for the CA3 course (but not for the final exam in April 2010), although in addition we must also have passed CA1.
  • September 2010 results dates: I know this seems like a long way away (!), but the Profession has confirmed there was a mistake when these dates were published. This has now been updated on the website: The non-CT results will be published shortly before Christmas 2010, similar to this year, and not in the week between Christmas Day and New Years’ Day as previously indicated.
  • CTs in the afternoon?: As you’ll know, the CTs exams take place in the mornings with the rest in the afternoons. There was a suggestion that, as people tend to be more focussed and perform better in the morning, the “easier” CTs subjects should be moved to the afternoons to allow the “harder” other subjects to have the morning slots. This wasn’t agreed upon, but merely a suggestion from one of the student reps. It may well come up again for discussion. Your views on it would be welcome!

The next meeting of this Forum is in May. If you would like to know more before then or to discuss any of the above issues further, please feel free to get in touch with your FASS Company Rep or me directly.

With Regards,
Steven Findlay
FASS Rep on SCF 2009/10
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Update From SCF - 14 May

Link to download SCF minutes

Hello,

Thanks again to those of you who provided feedback to me ahead of the latest meeting of the Student Consultative Forum, on 14 May, which I attended on behalf of FASS. I received a variety of comments from a total of 7 companies and raised all of your points. Please find attached draft minutes from the meeting. These will also be available on the FASS website (www.fass-online.org) soon. If you did submit a comment, or are just interested in what we discussed, please read my report below for some particular points that are in response to your comments and questions.

Exam timetables

  • CTs: The majority of feedback about the proposal to switch the CTs to the afternoon was against this idea, preferring the status quo. This was only ever a suggestion, and it was agreed not to take it forward.
  • CA1: I raised the possibility of moving CA1 Paper 2 to a morning slot, so that the two papers would be on consecutive mornings. This suggestion will be “considered” when future exam timetables are being drawn up.
  • CA3 exam: The Registrar noted concerns about the change in date for this exam after the provisional timetable had been published. This was said to necessary because of the high volume of applicants for what was the final sitting of the CA3 exam. The Registrar said that late timetable changes are avoided if at all possible and encouraged students to check the Profession’s website for timetable updates in case there are changes. They agreed to better communicate any such changes in future.

Exam centres

  • Edinburgh centre: The intention is to continue using the Edinburgh Business School at Heriot-Watt University because of the good feedback on it.
  • Glasgow centre: Comments about the heat in the room during the afternoon exams will be examined.

New requirements for CA2 and CA3 ·

  • The most controversial item on the agenda. I had received universally negative feedback on these new mandatory requirements – as had the other Student Reps. ·
  • This was a frustrating discussion: Despite being aware of all the feedback that had been received on this issue, the SCF was informed that the Profession’s Education Committee (which makes these decisions) had met the previous week and reaffirmed its position: This was now a “hard and fast” rule which would be “strictly adhered to”. ·
  • They were not interested in any of the solutions or compromises which were suggested (such as having to have only attempted, but not passed, every CT; or excluding CT9 from the requirements). · We were also told that only a small proportion of students had been qualifying on their final CT, and so this change will only affect a small number of people. ·
  • The main reason behind the requirements is to improve pass rates for CA2 and CA3, thus cutting down on the number of re-sitters, which means that less courses need to be run and there will be a shorter waiting period to get on a course. ·
  • The only compromise on this we got was from the Registrar:
    • A commitment to look into running more CT9 courses in Edinburgh to alleviate this bottle neck; and
    • It was stated that any students waiting on just CA2 and/or CA3 to qualify would be “fast tracked” and so not have to wait as long to get on a course.

UK Practice Module

  • The cost of this is to cover the annual review of the syllabus, of maintaining and updating the software, and on reviewing the question banks to ensure they are still relevant. There is also a degree of cross-subsidy between the different practice areas (e.g. P0/P1 costs the same to sit as P0/P2 even though far fewer students sit P0/P1)
  • The Profession is unwilling to provide their question banks to ActEd to protect the integrity of the qualification. The questions in the ActEd booklets are written entirely by ActEd.

Comments on specific questions and exams

  • All comments received have been passed on to the Principal Examiners for the relevant subject.
  • Before each exam is finalised, it is “guinea pigged” by a (masochistic) newly qualified actuary - so the Board of Examiners does sincerely seem to believe that each paper is doable in the time allowed.

CT9

  • The overwhelming majority of comments that the Profession receives from students about this course is that it covers too much. They therefore do not believe there is any scope to try to squeeze it into one day or an in-house seminar.

Other points

  • Review of Fail Grades: The new fail grade methodology (as described after the last SCF and also in an article in a recent edition of The Actuary) kicks in for the results of the April 2010 exams. It has not been possible to move to an F1, F2, etc. naming convention (which would have avoided a direct comparison with the old FA, FB, etc.) because of alleged “system reasons”.
  • Publishing Pass Marks: The Profession continues to believe that it is not in the interest of trainees or actuaries to publish the actual mark you get in an exam. This is to stop the prospect of “league tables” being complied and companies giving higher pay awards to those who get the highest marks. I suggested that publishing what the pass mark was for each past paper would be very helpful when studying for an exam, helping to de-mystify what is expected of students. It was acknowledged that in the future this might have to happen, but for reasons relating to transparency and public oversight.
  • Examiners Reports: Attempts are being made to improve the consistency of these across subjects. Currently, some are much more thorough than others.
  • Pass list for qualifiers: If you qualify on a course, you currently have to wait until the next set of exam results are published to see your name on the qualifiers list. This is changing: There will now be qualifiers list published online monthly.

The next meeting of the Forum will be in November. If you would like to know more before then or to discuss any of the above issues further, please feel free to get in touch with your FASS Company Rep or me directly.

With Regards,
Steven Findlay
FASS Rep on SCF 2009/10
Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
www.fass-online.org

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Student Consultative Forum

Minutes from SCF:
May 2009
November 2008

The Student Consultative Forum (SCF) was set up to provide a platform for actuarial students' views to be heard by and to influence the future shape of the actuarial profession. We meet twice a year in Edinburgh and London to discuss student educational issues and professional concerns with senior representatives from the Actuarial Profession and ActEd.

The SCF meet twice a year and the FASS SCF Rep attends to represent the views of Scotland-based actuarial students. If you have any opinions or contributions that you would like raised then this is the place to do so. For example:

  • Exam locations
  • Exam papers and content
  • ActEd study materials and courses
  • Student voting rights and influence in the profession
  • Anything else that is on your mind

There really is very little that is off topic. The more comments we get, the more weight we will have in expressing our views.

Thanks,

The FASS Committee

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