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NCTJ apologises to trainees over lost law exam papers

The National Council for the Training of Journalists has apologised to trainees after their law exam papers were lost in a computer glitch.

As revealed by HTFP today, around 15 would-be seniors were told they had to resit their media law and practice papers after they were wiped following last week’s exam at Harlow College.

The training body has now apologised “unreservedly” for the error and promised to cover the expenses of those forced to take resits.

In a statement this evening it said investigations into the incident were continuing and they still hoped to retrieve the lost papers,.

The statement read:  “The NCTJ has offered its sincere apologies to trainees and editors for the IT problem that occurred and for the distress caused to those sitting the NQJ at Harlow College on 7 March 2014.

“The NCTJ is taking this issue extremely seriously, and although we are continuing to address the situation with the college in the hope of retrieving 10 media law and practice exam scripts lost from computer desktops, so far this has not been successful.

“We have made contingency arrangements which will involve the option of a resit of a new exam paper for the ten candidates affected by the loss. The exam can be sat in newspaper offices or at the NCTJ and the NCTJ will pay expenses.

“For those candidates who prefer not to re-sit under the circumstances, a certificate can be issued for the other three sections if they are passed.

“Senior examiners of all three NQJ exams are aware of the circumstances at Harlow College and special consideration will be applied at moderation.

“The NCTJ will also offer the candidates affected a free re-sit of the Media Law and Practice exam in July 2014 should they require it.

“The NCTJ apologises unreservedly to trainees and editors for the distress caused by this situation.

“Our investigation into what went wrong is continuing and our findings will be summarised in the examiners’ report to be published in April.”

The incident which took place as the trainees were sitting the National Qualification in Journalism exam at Harlow College last week.

HTFP understands that the candidates had come to the end of the exam when they were asked to save their papers to desktop and log out and then log back in again in order to activate spellchecker software.

However when they logged back in, they found their work had disappeared.

The media law and practice exam is one of four sections of the NQJ that trainees have to pass in order to become senior reporters.

4 comments

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  • March 11, 2014 at 7:08 pm
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    Have they apologised for sending my trainees to wrong room, having malfunctioning computers and interviewees more interested in acting the part than answering the questions in the NCE on Friday?

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  • March 12, 2014 at 8:09 am
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    I am a shorthand tutor and organise NCTJ exams.
    I well remember once saying to a student that hopefully she had passed. I had not looked at her transcriptions. She got the wrong end of the stick when she failed she rang the NCTJ telling them that I had said she had passed!

    The NCTJ did not even telephone me, They just sent me a very rude faceless e mail threatening to stop me conducting their exams if I
    ‘behaved in this way again’.

    Over the years I had introduced the NCTJ exams to many newspapers that were floundering with training in the 1990s. Not once had they thanked me and I sting still from their rubuke, along with an administrator at the NCTJ once telling me how to teach shorthand. I then found out the shorthand exam administrator in those days had not even learned shorthand!

    I am virtualkly retired now

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  • March 12, 2014 at 10:10 am
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    Will the NCTJ apologise for training thousands of young people to be journalists when there are hardly any jobs out there?

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  • March 12, 2014 at 2:51 pm
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    A few years ago I was asked to help the NCTJ. I was delighted to accept and looked forward to paying back the industry. As with most of the people with industry knowledge my services were offered to this charity free of charge.

    Unfortunately my time with the NCTJ simply showed me what a shambles of an outfit they really are. They regularly messed up exam papers and constantly re-used old questions.

    Even when they were told a question was wrong they simply amended the marking, ignored the problem and used the question again a couple of year later !

    This will not change until the management structure alters….

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