(21-04-2015, 05:28 PM)Abdul Wrote: [ -> ]I have been told that there is almost 100% pass rate in module 2 in Eire to only 60% in the world. This means that the standard expected from Eire is lower. This cannot be fair.
The papers must be corected by examiner familar with principles declared. Were the layouts corrected by a manager who decided to pass his own staff? Awarding your staff good grades discredits integrity of exam.
On behalf of all who has to work hard to pass their exams I am very dissappointed in IRSE.
Abdul
Abdul,
Firstly I certainly believe that you are correct that the exam centre having the best results for the exam as a whole was Dublin; I do not know (the Exam Review is next week) but it may well be that the results in Mod 2 may have been 100% or close to that.
Let's look at some other facts. Eire is not part of the UK where the exam is marked; the practices (although they have a common 19th century heritage) are in some ways somewhat different. Eire actually achieved its independence from the British empire rather longer ago than many other countries, including India. The world changes; a few years ago there were very few if any IRSE members from the Indian subcontinent; nowadays there are generally more IRSE Exam entries from there than the UK.
Yes the Irish are near neighbours to the UK and fellow members of the European Union, but on the other hand they were not among the allies in the Second World War and within my life on the railway there have been three occasions where I have been on the streets on mainland UK rather close to where Irish Republican terrorists have placed bombs intended to kill members of the civilian population . Fortunately that era is now behind us; it of course has nothing to do with the marking of individual exam papers, but in a way "the troubles" might be relevant to the results this year.
Until recently there were virtually NO members of the IRSE from Eire; I understand from history books that many ties were cut at independence after the First World War. It is only very recently that an Irish section of the IRSE was set up and last year there was a recruitment exercise and hence I believe that the "average" candidate from Eire is a person with perhaps 10-30 years of varied railway experience. I guess from my limited knowledge of India (that I take as a bench-mark for "the rest of the world"), the average candidate has probably 1-5 years of experience and that fact alone may well go a long way to explaining the results. The last time I was in India to undertake some training a couple of years ago, some attendees had only joined the industry some 6 months previously fresh from graduation and were being expected to attempt multiple modules in a further 6 months- it was almost inevitable that they were going to fail and it was a rediculous position for them to be placed.
I also know that a senior Iarnrod Eireann engineer was in London almost exactly a year ago and came to one of my IRSE Exam study events in London and after that he encouraged his staff to sit modules from the exam and organised Signet Solutions to run (at least one and I think two) training courses; I seem to remember Andy had just come back from a week there when we ran the mod2/3 Study weekend last summer.
So I would put their success down to-
a) length of railway experience
b) close involvement with the operations of a railway
c) management support
d) training
Hence I fully believe that the Dublin result reflects good candidates, not a lower standard. There are no examiners from Eire so can be completely certain that no paper was marked even unwittingly by their manager. Indeed each paper is marked separately by two examiners and then their results compared and any discrepancies in marking discussed and agreed, so this gives good protection against any possible bias or genuine mistake.
As has been pointed out, the examiners do not actually know where a candidate is from when marking paper; what they know is what practices the candidate declares. Quite a lot of candidates from India CHOOSE to declare UK mainline practices (because in many cases they have been preparing design for this environment for years). A candidate I know from mainline China had to travel to Hong Kong (a day's train journey plus flight!) to sit the exam and there are plenty of UK people and Indian people in Australia- indeed I know from records of previous years's results that a few candidates have appeared for the exam in 3 different continents, so even the exam centre attended is not a clear indicator of where the person is from.
You do not say in your post which environment you are from. I could draw an inference from your name, but that may well not be correct. I see from your bio that you state you are at least currently in Birmingham and so it is reasonable to suggest that you are likely to be working now in accordance with UK practice, whatever your previous history- I am sure that nowadays far more signalling work for the UK is being done abroad than work for abroad is now being done within the UK. Hence without further explanation I am unable to understand the source of your complaint. What I do know is that you joined the Forum yesterday and have spent a total of 24 minutes on line, so it is pretty clear that you did not avail yourself of any help or advice from this source prior to sitting the exam; similarly (as far as I know from your user name) you have not attended any of the Younger Member IRSE Exam events and if you are in Birmingham then these should be relatively easily accessible to you. Perhaps you'll be attending the Exam Review in London next week or the Mod2/3 event that we expect to hold in Derby in early summer.......
Some of the examiners have been marking papers for longer than I have worked on the railway and have travelled the world with the institution. Where there is something in a practice with which they are not fully familiar and which looks doubtful, they know where to look / who to ask. Actually I think it may even be an advantage to use a practice that is not their core expertise as if something looks odd but feasible, the candidate may well get away with it, whereas the slightest departure from the examiner's native practice may well be pounced upon.
HOWEVER, there is an element which perhaps lies behind your complaint that I think does have some validity- the question could be unwittingly unfair to candidates from different backgrounds.
You do not state which practice you used for Mod 2; so looking at a more generic case let's assume for purposes of argument that it could have been from part of Indian Railways. I most certainly no expert in that sphere, but I am aware that certain practice varies from railway to railway- afterall it is a huge network spanning different environments. However I believe that it is quite common to have signalling around the various stations and then relatively long lengths of sections between them whether using traditional absolute block or axle counters. This is not the sort of railway typically depicted in the Mod2 layout and I recognise that it is unreasonable to tell a candidate to signal a line with say a 3 minute headway according to the practices with which they are familiar if those practices are based on a railway that at best utilises a 15 minute headway- the candidate is placed in an impossible position. The same can occur for an Australian candidate offering speed signalling as the combination of headway requirement and turnout speeds may actually have no compliant solution for a particular layout.
In such cases, my advice to candidates is to recognise it is an exam, do the best they can and EXPLAIN THE PROBLEM to the examiner in their answer. More than one Indian candidate who I know have undertake a headway calculation to UK MAS practices (to get the marks and prove they can do it) before stating that it is irrelevant to their railway's practices since they typically do not need such close headway and that the type of signalling at their stations is dictated by quantity and category of traffic and that they will signal the station areas of the exam layout accordingly but there is no signalling within the long sections between and hence in their solution the headway will be limited by the longest section. They passed the exam.
I would encourage you, now that the 2014 layouts are downloadable from the IRSE website, to have a go at it in a similar manner to which you did within the exam and then post it on this Forum. Then we might be able to see and understand where the problem lies. On the one hand we might learn of a difficulty you face of which we were unaware, on the other we might be able to point out what looks wrong to us and therefore make some constructive suggestions of how to present better.
I know almost all of the examiners to a greater or lesser extent and am perfectly happy to challenge them face-to-face when I feel it appropriate. Indeed there have been quite a few changes made in response to my comments over the last decade- if there is a good argument they do listen.
So let's forget the inflamatory wording of your post and concentrate on what may actually need to be addressed to make attempting Module 2 using non UK practices more achievable.