This following petition requests the University of Southampton Business School to investigate into the problems encountered during the MANG1007 – Management Analysis examination and consider these issues whilst assessing students’ performance in the module.

Having sat the exam on Wednesday 14th January 2015, the students would like to make a formal complaint with regards to the extremely poor invigilation and organisational standards throughout the examination, as well as the misleading mistakes found in questions from the exam paper.

From a student perspective, it can be expected that modular examinations are assessed fairly and tests us on both one’s knowledge of the subject and the ability to apply these into practice. Many students felt this was not the case when sitting the MANG1007 exam as multiple mistakes were discovered in the paper, but were not formally notified by invigilators prior to beginning the exam. This is considered extremely unprofessional, as it is expected that the question papers are reviewed prior to the examination, and mistakes would have been identified and corrected by the department. Given that there were still errors in the question paper and students were not informed until later during the exam, we consider this as unacceptable, as students who initially attempted the questions would have had insufficient or erroneous information to complete the solution (until being notified, compromising their exam through lost time).

The questions concerned were QB1 (insufficient evidence) and QB2 (misguiding information).

In addition to the errors discovered in the question paper, the second issue during the examination was the poor invigilation throughout the exam, largely linked to the first issue raised. Not only did they fail to recognise the errors, some students were provided misleading information and students were also disrupted by numerous announcements made throughout the exam.

One student reported the missing information in question B1 to an invigilator, who dismissed their claim and subsequently instructed them to read the question again. This was before an announcement was made towards the end of the exam, acknowledging the error and informing students of the additional information required. This resulted in students being provided conflicting information which led to confusion and large loss of time.

Furthermore, multiple students have complained about the wording in question B2, believing that the question contained misguiding information. The question context was also written in a non-standard grammatical structure, which made the question incomprehensible, especially to non-native English speakers.

Although ten additional minutes was added to compensate for the errors discovered at the end of the examination, we believe that this is insufficient considering the impact from the mistakes encountered. The late recognition and constant disruption from the invigilators has caused unnecessary confusion, panic, stress and time-wasting.

Overall, we are extremely disappointed with the examination condition. This includes (but is not limited to) the mistakes in the questions, the poor organisation of the exam and the poor invigilation throughout the duration of the examination. It caused us stress, panic and severely affected our focus on the examination.

On behalf of the class, I hope that the University of Southampton Business School considers this petition, investigates into the problems and take appropriate action where necessary.