Kaplan stresses assessments will go ahead as planned, apologises for confusion
SQE students have expressed their frustration after receiving an email explaining that their upcoming exam slot had been cancelled at their request — despite making no such request.
Legal Cheek can reveal a number of students were informed incorrectly on Wednesday morning that their slot for the upcoming SQE1 sitting in January “ha[d] been cancelled as requested”.
The email naturally left students — many of whom spent hours in online queues to secure an exam spot in the first place — scrambling to speak to someone in a bid to find out what was going on.
“I called the number provided and was put straight into a queue where I didn’t move for an hour and a half,” one stressed student told Legal Cheek. “I know of others who have spent all morning in the queue with dozens others in front of them.”
“There has been a lot of stress on the group chats this morning with waits of over an hour on the phone whilst people try to find out what is going on,” another added.
In a statement, Kaplan explained that prior to the Christmas break, it agreed with Pearson VUE that some candidates due to sit SQE1 in January at the Islington test centre could have a slightly later assessment start time, moving from 8am to 9am.
“This is to facilitate a later check in for candidates, since candidates testing at this test centre must check in one hour prior to their assessment,” Kaplan said.
It continued:
“We can confirm that no assessments have been cancelled. Affected candidates received a notice from Pearson VUE that their 8am assessment start time had been cancelled. Those candidates, with the revised 9am start time, were contacted directly by email by the Kaplan SQE team to provide clarification and reassurance that the assessment will go ahead at the revised time. We apologised for any uncertainty caused by the email from Pearson VUE.”
“As per our website, candidates are able to contact the Kaplan SQE Candidate Services team by email up to the 29th December, then again from 2nd January,” the statement added.