Are you confused about what is going to be in your CIPS exam? Don’t worry, we will clarify that here - you are not alone! Right now, there is a lot of confusion about what constitutes “assessment material” (and also what doesn’t). This is really important, because learners want to know what will be tested in their exam!
You might be surprised to know that the CIPS study guides are NOT assessed. They are not official assessment material and the CIPS examining team does not base its exam questions on the content of the CIPS study guides (…well, at least that’s what they say).
For years, CIPS has not been not been very clear about this publicly. You could argue they have a conflict of interests because they want to sell more study guides. The study guides represent significant revenue for the institute (over £1 million a year) and so they are keen that students continue to purchase these.
Now at this point, you might want to challenge what we’re saying here. Surely if CIPS publishes study guides for each of its exams, then it stands to reason studying these books will ensure you are fully prepared for that exam? Surely CIPS isn’t going to test something that it hasn’t covered in its own study guide?
The issue here is that although the CIPS study guides are branded and marketed as essential study resources to support learners through their professional CIPS qualifications, they haven’t actually been written by anyone in CIPS. While they might be badged as CIPS resources and only available for purchase via the CIPS bookshop, their production has actually been outsourced to a third party company.
This third party company is not a procurement specialist and so, to write the study guides, they in turn outsource the authoring to a procurement consultant freelancer. By now, we are getting quite a long way remove from CIPS, and this may go someway to explaining the price of them. Neither the book production company, nor the author, are part of the CIPS exams team.
Next time you are opening your CIPS study guide, take a peek at the title verso page (…this is the reverse of the page immediately inside the cover). You will see the author’s name mentioned around two-thirds of the way down the page - plus their relevant qualifications. Normally you’d expect CIPS study guide authors to be either MCIPS or FCIPS qualified, but you may notice that several are not CIPS qualified.
So what…?
The CIPS study guides are useful reference documents, but they are not “gospel” for your exam. CIPS publishes an official syllabus for each of its professional qualifications. The syllabus documents all of the study modules and their associated learning outcomes. Each learning outcome is then broken down to form indicative content in the form of bullet-pointed “assessment criteria”. This is what the exam questions are based on.
The CIPS official policy on assessments is that they assess the learning outcomes and learning criteria of these syllabus documents. This has been the case (and continues to be) for many years.
This does not mean you should abandon or ignore the CIPS study guides. As we’ve already said, they are useful. It is always helpful to read of someone else’s views about academic content. Personally-speaking, we at Cordie have always recommended learners to buy the CIPS study guides and to use them as a dipping in and out resource (i.e. a “supplement”). For our apprentices, we even provide these free of charge.
However, do not be fooled into thinking that these study guides form the basis of your exams. We need to concentrate and stay focused on the learning content detailed in the syllabus in order to get the best preparation for our exams!
Several of our tutor team have extensive experience of working directly with CIPS and their assessment team. We use this experience and “inside knowledge” to help guide our learners through the CIPS exams. While we hope you have found this blog article useful, please do get in touch with us should you wish to know more.