The candidate appealed the decision of the Examining Board allotting her only 42 marks for Paper B 2024, which meant that she has failed the EQE.
The candidate’s objection
The candidate argued that it was not clear from the Examiner’s Report how the 30 marks available according to the Examiner’s Report for establishing IS for claim 1 were to be obtained at all, since a maximum of 27 marks was arrived at by adding up the individual points to be awarded as set out in the ER.
The disciplinary board’s decision
For the board, the candidate rightly criticized the fact that the addition of the points to be awarded resulted in only 27 and not 30 marks.
It follows from this that, contrary to Rule 6 (1) REQE, the assessment of examination paper B was based on a mark scale of 0 to only 97 and that 3 marks were incorrectly not awarded.
The DB noted that a total of up to 3 marks could be awarded for the formulation of the problem, irrespective of whether D2 or D1 was taken as the CPA.
It was not apparent to the DB that the Examination Board took into account the incorrectly not awarded 3 markss when assessing the candidate’s examination paper.
In other words, it cannot be excluded that the candidate would have scored up to 3 marks more for her solution if the total of 30 marks to be achieved had been correctly allocated to the individual sub-steps in the assessment of the substantiation of the IS for the independent device claim.
If she had actually scored all 3 marks more, her work on examination paper B would have been assessed with a total of 45 marks and thus with the grade “compensable fail” that she sought in her appeal.
The assessment of the candidate’s examination paper therefore violated R 6 (1) IREQE, so that the decision of the Examination Board of July 1, 2024 must be set aside.
The board reminded that, according Art 24 (4), 2d sentence, REQE, the DBA is only empowered to set aside the contested decision and refer the matter back to the EB for a new decision.
In discretionary matters, it cannot replace the contested decision with its own and it is not its duty to allocate marks.
Therefore, requests for the award of additional marks or a specific grade cannot be dealt with in the appeal procedure before the DBA.
As the appeal was successful, the file was remitted to the EB for a new decision and the appeal fee was reimbursed.
Comments
It is rather surprising that the EB did not realise that the information given in the Examiner’s Report was incomplete, respectively incorrect, in so far as from the apparently 30 marks available, totting up the marks in the Examiner’s report ended with only 27 marks. Where have the missing three marks gone?
The appeal could have been avoided if the EB had revised its decision rather than alleging that “the marking was correct and no further points could be awarded”.
Out of fairness, the present decision should be applied to all candidates having obtained 42 marks in Paper B 2024, even if they have not appealed.
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