No study centre anywhere in the world has prior sight of the CIPS exam questions. Like the “secret recipe” for Coca Cola, all assessment questions at CIPS are closely guarded for confidentiality purposes - and rightly so from an assessment integrity perspective. It means that anyone publishing so-called “mock” or practice questions does so with a degree of guesswork in mind.
Recently, we‘ve received feedback from CIPS exam candidates that the published CIPS ‘sample’ exam questions are notably different to the exam questions experienced in reality. Reports have suggested the actual exam questions are notably more complicated, using considerably longer stem questions and written in a far more convoluted fashion.
The feedback we have received is consistent across many learners on different study modules, in different geographical territories and across all qualification levels. Many have complained to us that the CIPS ‘sample’ questions are misleading and unrepresentative, suggesting they ‘lull’ you into a sense of false security before the exam.
To address this valuable feedback, Cordie has upgraded a number of our practice exam sets - particularly those at Level 4 (the Diploma in Procurement & Supply). We have made our questions more technically demanding, more complex and longer in text. We have increased the ‘lexical density’ in line with the feedback we have received. While these no longer represent the same standard as the CIPS ‘sample’ questions, we believe this step-up in complexity helps prepare learners for their exams in a better and more realistic way.
We have also shared our concerns and the learner feedback on the ‘sample’ questions with CIPS, who have undertaken to “look into the matter”.
If you would like to know more about question structuring and the techniques that should be employed to create assessment questions, then please get in contact.
More specifically, if you have any concerns or anxiety about the exam questions you hvae experienced (or about to experience) then do please get in touch with us, as we think we can help - or at least lend a sympathetic and understanding ear. We look forward to hearing from you!