Earlier this week, CIPS announced plans to reduce the availability of its exam centres throughout the UK. During 2024, there will be a phased rationalisation, as CIPS shuts down 16 of its public exam centres in the hope that learners will opt for the more expensive “remote invigilation” offering. Here we detail which exam centres will close when and how you can take advantage of the Cordie exam centre, which will be remaining open for business as usual.

There has been a sudden and dramatic price increase in the CIPS study guides. Some have increased as much as 25%. Unfortunately, even though Cordie is an approved study centre and a “centre of excellence” partner of CIPS, we were given no notice of these increases, and so it with great regret to all of our CIPS learners that we bring this news retrospectively to you.

Earlier this week, CIPS released the all-important “theme” for next month’s L6M4 Future Strategic Challenges for the Profession exam. This time round the theme is: Digitalisation of Procurement & Supply Chains, and once again CIPS has chosen a key forward-looking disruptive technological influence on procurement and supply chain processes. This one should be a belter!

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!

Once again, we were delighted to achieve a 100% pass-rate for the daunting CIPS L6M4 “Future Challenges for the Profession” study module at the May 2023 exam results. While we are delighted to share this success with you, we are mindful that this has not always been the case. Indeed, many CIPS learners find the L6M4 module to be one of the hardest they encounter across all Levels of the CIPS professional qualification. Here we explore why that is so often the case, and what you can do to improve your chances of exam success on this tricky module.

An important announcement has just been made by the Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply (CIPS) regarding a major change to their Special Considerations policy. Notably, the permitted time allowed to make a claim for special considerations is going to be reduced from 7 days to 48 hours after your exam, with effect from 2024. Here, we assess what this means for you as a CIPS learner.

HOT OFF THE PRESS: CIPS has just announced the shake-up to their annual exam schedule is being postponed until 2025. The dates of when and where you can take your CIPS exams will now be changing with effect from January 2025 and not next year, as previously planned.

It’s such a great word. Not is it only difficult to pronounce and spell, but it also nicely sums up its true meaning: to place oneself into a position of confusion, disorientation and mystification. Unfortunately, many of us feel this during exams, but it needn’t be this way.

The CIPS Level 4 Diploma in Procurement & Supply is changing next year! Here is a brief overview of the changes and what you can expect to be different and where you can get hold of a copy!

We often get asked about the duplications of learning content across study modules and different qualification levels on the CIPS syllabus. The same content and theories regularly reappear again and again throughout the syllabus and it is unclear what new material (if any) the Institute would like you to learn.

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.

Good news! CIPS has implemented a manual workaround to overcome the technical difficulties that have been experienced on their IT platform. In short, this means you can continue to book your exams with confidence and we will work with CIPS on their manual workaround to get your exams booked in time for the November exams.

Many CIPS students think the only place to get study resources for CIPS qualifications is directly from CIPS itself. While it has a degree of logic to it, this simply isn’t true - and in fact there are several alternative places where there are far superior, less expensive and better quality learning resources. In this blog, we will explain more!

This is possibly the worst advice that anyone could give you towards your CIPS exams. In this short article, we will explain why this kind of suggestion could spell disaster for your studies and, while well-meaning, why you really should be doing the complete opposite…!

The CIPS Level 4 Diploma in Procurement & Supply is a UK national qualification that has international recognition. As such, it has been designed to comply with the requirements of the UK Government’s qualifications regulator Ofqual so that it has official recognition and standing.

Nobody likes making a fuss, but there are occasions when all of your hard work and commitment to study seems to have fallen flat. Everybody has the right to a ‘fair’ exam assesment - and this principle lies at the heart of all CIPS exams. In this blog we tell you how to deal with things that ‘go wrong’ during your exam, what to do about them and how to appeal.

We get asked this question time and time again by so many people interested in starting their studies for their CIPS professional qualifications. It is not easy for the newcomer to CIPS. There are five “levels” of study each leading to separate qualification, and so it is easy to be confused or tempted to start on the wrong one.