Changes to written examinations

Firstly, we would like to express thanks to the local institute network for assisting us over the years in delivering written examinations to our learners and members. We could not have done this without you and very much appreciate all the years of hard work local institutes have put into helping deliver exams across the regions.

We are in the process of changing our assessment provider to PSI that will allow us to realise our objective of improving the learner experience through the use of cutting-edge technology in the UK and internationally. Without this change the CII would not have been able to adapt so quickly to our current environment.

We acknowledge that our communication to local institutes around these changes should have been more forthcoming and we apologise for this.

Although Covid-19 has impacted our transition plans to PSI, we have been working together to bring remote invigilation (RI) on-stream as quickly as possible, so candidates can resume sitting exams. Trials are taking place this month with wider roll-out expected from July. These developments have been communicated to candidates.

Below provides an update of where we currently are with the transition of written exams to PSI, these could change if the Covid19 situation develops further.

July’s written exams

As the safety of our students and members is our highest priority and we wanted to provide certainty to candidates sitting exams in July, we took the decision on 15 May to move all of July’s written exams to RI, so no centres will be used for these. This has been communicated to all candidates.

October written exams and onwards.

For October’s written exams we are planning to move all exams to PSI centres. We can provide confirmation of the venues being used 6 weeks before the exams. In as far as possible this will mirror the towns and cities, we used in 2019. We are carefully analysing the Covid 19 situation to consider our options for how we will deliver this session.

This means that from October onwards we will no longer be using local exam centres as PSI will provide these and the invigilators. PSI vets all exam centres to ensure they meet high standards and to ensure they are fit for purpose.

Multiple Choice exams will also start migrating to PSI centres from mid-July, this is planned to be completed by December 2020.