Complaints for Level 4 Synoptic Exam

sjenner11

After the abysmal Level 4 synoptic exam and the AAT's complete disregard towards students aspiring to progress. Does anyone know of the best address/e-mail to send a formal complaint to?

PS. I urge all professional level students to submit a complaint to AAT even if you have or have not passed this exam. AAT need to be held responsible for the stress and upset brought upon hundreds of student across the country with their poorly thought out exams - MDCL and Synoptic.

Nicola22

i emailed membershipsupport@aat.org.uk they took 10 days to reply!

They sent me a massive email apologising and saying they uplifted MDCL in line with last years results but because the synoptic has nothing to compare it to they will not be uplifting anyones result

JaneMarie

I would recommend that the grading system be put aside for this year as it has become irrelevant and in no way indicative of the capabilities of ANY of the students. It is best to focus on students passing the level in order to progress with their future plans.

AAT need to acknowledge they are destroying people's lives and plans for their futures. Sorry if this sounds dramatic but I do not believe it is. I know fellow students deliberating whether to even apply for ACCA even though they have passed all the exams because their self belief has been knocked. Others cannot apply due to resits and some companies demand repayment of fees from their staff if they fail.

How the training providers and colleges are coping with the situation and staffing levels is beyond me. Some students have delayed and will return in September, when they obviously have a new set of students who need their undivided attention.

The situation is beyond internal rectification an external body needs to be contacted by affected students. I would like to add I have passed all the exams but still feel extremely strongly about this.

marialucas

Response from AAT;


Thank you for your email regarding the synoptic assessment.

Please accept my apologies for the delay of my response.

I am sorry to hear of the disappointment and upset you feel over your synoptic assessment (PDSY). AAT takes the quality of its assessments very seriously and as well as ensuring that standards are maintained over time, would wish all students to have a positive experience during the assessment.

For this reason PDSY, like any other assessment, follows continuous quality review to ensure it is operating in the way it should . Adjustments are made to assessments as necessary during the marking phase, prior to results being released which can include adjustments to pass marks. We do of course monitor pass rates for our assessments as one of the measures that fit into this quality review.

We are aware that many students find the PDSY synoptic assessment more challenging than the unit assessments. This is not altogether surprising in view of the fact that the synoptic assessment challenges students in very different ways to individual unit assessments. The synoptic assessment tests students’ understanding of the connections between topics across the qualification and draws on content from across the units in a more holistic way. It also requires students to assimilate, evaluate and interpret information, and to provide a higher proportion of extended written answers. However, I can assure you that this is a factor that we take into account prior to results being released.

The scheduling of synoptic assessments has been developed to meet a number of requirements and considerations, including:

•The need to apply quality assurance procedures to ensure the validity and reliability of assessments, in terms of their anticipated behaviour and performance.
•The need to have sufficient time between sittings to carry out the marking of written answers and to ensure the standardisation of marking.
•The known or anticipates dates of academic and public holidays and breaks.

When drawing up the schedules, we consulted with a number of training providers that are representative of the range of type and size of those delivering the AAT qualification.

We are aware of the disappointment students are feeling towards AAT and have been forwarding their feedback and concerns to the relevant team to contribute towards our continuous review of the assessment. At present, we are unable to comment on whether there will be changes made to this assessment or the sittings based on the feedback we have received. We appreciate your feedback regarding this assessment and it has been passed onto the relevant team.

I’m sorry I was unable to provide you with a more favourable response and wish you all the best with your studies.

If you have any other queries please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Kind regards

SRgs

I am feeling the same as it seems a lot are.
I took the synoptic in May, and whilst I thought it was incredibly hard. I thought that I had done enough to pass the exam, however I failed.
When I left the exam and spoke with another aat member about the exam in which we had the same question. We had raised identical points on this question yet they received exceeded and I was significantly below? I'm so confused at what more I could have done. I can only feel that she had used certain trigger words that scored her more marks, or as they were written questions they were interpreted differently by different invigilators who marked the exam.
Also on question 6 I scored myself and should have received 12 marks at least, yet I also received below requirement.
I don't understand where I went wrong and I don't know where to begin to put right where I went wrong, or revise for this exam again!
I also received my result late on a friday and went into college first thing Monday morning to find out that if I wanted to resit I had to do it that week! I mean if I didn't pass with a couple of weeks solid revision before when the subjects were fresh in my mind what hope did I have if I was to do it again with only a day or two to revise, it's ridiculous. Now I have to wait until the end of September to do the resit, wait 6 weeks for my result. Meaning I cannot start CIMA until mid November!! I'm so disheartened by the whole experience.
I have paid to have my exam remarked as I have no other option whilst I wait until the exam window in September. However I hold out zero hope that my grade will change, as I am certain that aat would not Change it even if it was incorrect As then they would be admitting that they are wrong in the first place and would receive a massive backlash from other students who just missed out.

tinkerbell0406

Hi
I have done the same, took exam in May and ask for a remark as i felt very confident in passing. I don't know what more i could have done, so paid £30 for extra feedback really.
I cannot believe that the next window is end of September its crazy, i need to get this finished and i feel i know more than enough to pass the qualification, but will end up with only an overall pass.

fifi21

I took the synoptic exam in May and received 65%. I did find the exam extremely difficult and struggled to understand questions 4 and 6. I received my results late on Friday night and also discovered that I could only resit that week. As expected I was significantly below requirement for questions 4 and 6. I decided to resit at the end of the week, although there was no realistic prospect of passing this time. Imagine my horror, when I review the questions, only to find that question 4 and 6 were exactly the same as the previous exam! How could I realistically pass this time with the same questions that I previously struggled with and only having a few days to revise? I am thoroughly depressed and demotivated with AAT and am seriously considering packing it all in.

tinkerbell0406

We'll a friend of mine did just pack it all in. I am half way through and have this year appealed twice, just for the extra feedback.
Aat are not keeping on top of there syllabus or there training providers. I still have not received my feedback from June 30th from my provider. I would not advise anyone to go down aat route, better just getting on and getting a real qualification. This is just pure frustration and they seem to be justifying it by saying it is new exams and new standards....unfortunately the qualifications are the same.

AlisonSwanson

Hello. Can I ask those of you who have made an appeal what extra feedback do you get from the AAT ? I have never heard of a student getting extra feedback before on top of what they already get from SecureAssess.
Hope the AAT listen to feedback from students and tutors and make some changes soon!
Thank you.

tinkerbell0406

The first time i appealed, i was sent a full breakdown of where i had gone wrong ....this should be a standard review. I walked in to the reviewed exam and walked it...i knew exactly what the examiner wanted. But £30 for something that aat should supply at least to the training provider.

AlisonSwanson

Thanks for that. Very interesting. I agree the format of the current feedback is pretty useless.

katarinaxt

Hi All,

This is insane. I think that this exam (written questions) were really difficult. I didn't have any problems with ANY previous exams but unfortunately I didn't pass this one. They uplifted MDCL which was really easy. What?!?! but they are not going to do anything with Synoptic.

JaneMarie

I do not believe that any sensible student would want Level 4 to be easy because this would only set you up for a fall if you continued with higher qualifications.

I went into the synoptic expecting to assimilate, evaluate and interpret information given but found it more of a "where's wally" exercise and only having 5 minutes to find him !! In other words instead of interpreting information given, it was more about assessing what wasn't there. Even this may not have been too much of a problem if from all of the options available in relation to internal control: purchase, sales, costing and capital expenditure, they hadn't set the most obscure scenario possible - so unfair and absolutely does not achieve what it set out to do.

I do not understand why organisations see external regulating bodies such as Ofqual a threat, they have the expertise, staff and resources to assess the situation and work with AAT to advise and rectify the problems. Next years students are just as important as us.

Anyway I vote that they pass the students that did well in all other units, chalk it up to experience and focus on correcting it for next year (which is only 6 weeks away).

mergen

All this is what i will be doing next week after my exam - read following thread page 15 Management Accounting: Decision and Control (AQ2016) Exam.
More than welcome to join me.

Kennnnedyy

Results have come out for the July sitting for the synoptic exam and again a lot of people who were expecting to pass have failed so i have drafted this email to membershipsupport@aat.org.uk that you are all free to use also.

Hi,

I was wondering if there were any plans to uplift the Level 4 Synoptic exam results due to the abysmal pass rate (especially for 1st time sitters). I along with many of my peers passed every other exam 1st time and still only managed a very low percentage score with this exam, surely this can not be right. Especially considering the fact that the MDCL exam results were heavily boosted despite the fact that (in my group of peers) we found the exam was a lot more similar to what we were expecting and pass rates (again in my group of peers) were significantly higher. I understand that the MDCL scores were boosted due to the comparable statistics with last years results and this would not be possible for the synoptic exam due to the fact that this is the 1st year that the exam is being run however i don't feel that us as the 1st set of students to sit this exam should be punished for doing so especially if there are plans to change the exam for next year so i would propose a percentage increase nationwide in results to reflect the pass rates of the previous exams sat by all students this year or at least to reflect a pass rate that the AAT were expecting for this exam.

Thanks,

Kennedy.

JaneMarie

The college I attended have just started offering 1 day resit, revision courses for £120.00 per day for AAT. This is taking place between Sept-Dec 2017. This in conjunction with AAT charging £30 appeals fees, £80 (avg) resit fee and those on level 4 having to pay another year's membership fee to be able to resit, does anyone else have a sense of financial gain over education taking place?

Staceydanielsx

Kennnnedyy said:

Results have come out for the July sitting for the synoptic exam and again a lot of people who were expecting to pass have failed so i have drafted this email to membershipsupport@aat.org.uk that you are all free to use also.

Hi,

I was wondering if there were any plans to uplift the Level 4 Synoptic exam results due to the abysmal pass rate (especially for 1st time sitters). I along with many of my peers passed every other exam 1st time and still only managed a very low percentage score with this exam, surely this can not be right. Especially considering the fact that the MDCL exam results were heavily boosted despite the fact that (in my group of peers) we found the exam was a lot more similar to what we were expecting and pass rates (again in my group of peers) were significantly higher. I understand that the MDCL scores were boosted due to the comparable statistics with last years results and this would not be possible for the synoptic exam due to the fact that this is the 1st year that the exam is being run however i don't feel that us as the 1st set of students to sit this exam should be punished for doing so especially if there are plans to change the exam for next year so i would propose a percentage increase nationwide in results to reflect the pass rates of the previous exams sat by all students this year or at least to reflect a pass rate that the AAT were expecting for this exam.

Thanks,

Kennedy.

Hi Kennedy, I received my results last week, with shocking results following my results of 90%+ on the other level 4 exams. Did you ever hear back from AAT on your email? Thanks,
Stacey