April Performance Exam
A satisfactory outcome for me would be a first-time pass in exchange for my applied study time and effort, plus £55, achieved through answering a fair, reasonable and well-balanced range of questions within the scope of the syllabus. I can’t help wondering who actually sets the exams and what motivates them to develop particularly difficult, obscure or biased questions to trip up the candidate rather than test their understanding and application of it. Admittedly, if one’s not up to the mark then fair enough – a fail it is. I certainly wouldn’t want any charity.
I would suggest that a satisfactory outcome for the CAA would be one of positive, measurable and genuine feedback showing that candidates were achieving a consistently good standard in each subject. So, if more people were passing the exams due to a genuine increase in competence then the training effort would have achieved its objective. In that case then, why should the questions be made even more devious and obscure to change the standard?
If every candidate had, say, a 100% understanding and recall of every single facet and detail of a subject, and all of them were passing every exam with a 100% score, what would happen then? The CAA could palpably demonstrate the learning object was well and truly delivered. Or they could choose to introduce ridiculously arcane and out-of-control exam processes that ensured fewer and fewer people could ever pass them, thereby guaranteeing worsening success rates!
In turn, this would just encourage development and learning of a wider range of exam-taking techniques to combat devious questions, which at best would be a distraction and at worst an academic candidate-filter, deviating from the original learning objective and creating resentment amongst those who would have to jump through ever tightening and irrelevant hoops.
Did “very nearly half” of February’s candidates only have “very nearly half” the understanding of the Performance subject? I certainly felt I had sufficient knowledge then, and even better preparation for April’s exam. But perhaps I’m just deluding myself.