The RCGP SCA examination was conducted for the first time over the past two weeks. On Tuesday 14th November, the afternoon sitting was significantly affected by a system outage, which resulted in significant numbers of trainees being left with an incomplete examination. Not to mention that there was NO direct communication from the RCGP during this time, so candidates were left in absolute limbo for HOURS, with over 5 hours spent in exam conditions.

The RCGP have now released a statement to say that all affected trainees will not have their attempt counted, will not be able to resit in November, and instead will have to wait until the next available sitting in JANUARY to redo the whole exam.

It cannot be stressed enough the sheer impact this decision and complete lack of contingency has taken on the affected candidates mental health and wellbeing, who have been preparing for this exam for months on end. That’s not even considering the disruption caused to their day-to-day life, and to those around them.

At the very least, you might expect the RCGP to refund the nearly £1.2K exam fee, but instead they have advertised their ‘goodwill’ in transferring the fee to the January sitting.

Furthermore, having spoken to several affected trainees- a January resit just would not be viable. Many have an expected CCT date as early as February, and others are in late term pregnancy, are juggling family commitments, carer responsibilities, or have already made holiday plans which are now being cancelled. That’s not even mentioning that many candidates have used up most of their annual and study leave in preparation for this exam, which they will no longer have available to them for a resit.

We do appreciate the effort that goes into organising examinations but delaying until January, especially without ascertaining the thoughts of the affected trainees, just seems to make it very clear where trainees lie in the priorities of the RCGP and how little thought is given to their well-being.

Whilst the RCGP was not directly responsibly for the technological difficulties, this was a predictable issue with a new online examination and there was no contingency plan in place to remedy this.

If an earlier sitting really is not possible to organise, then reasonable alternatives should be considered, but this has clearly not been done either. On behalf of one of the affected trainees, multiple possible alternatives have been suggested which could and should be considered, for instance:

1) Marking the exam with the stations that were completed and extrapolating from this

2) Allowing a resit of the number of stations needed to make up to 12 in the next few weeks (given the number of candidates affected this should not be as big a task as organising a full sitting)

3) Allowing candidates to submit RCA videos to make up the stations to 12 and marking these alongside the SCA cases

So please sign this petition to show the RCGP that their current plan is completely unacceptable, and they need to make it their priority to coordinate an earlier sitting (at the latest within the next 1-2 weeks), or come up with a better alternative.

And at the very least, affected candidates deserve a refund of their nearly £1.2K exam fee and any contingency to be done for free, to compensate for the turmoil this has caused.

Even if you weren’t directly affected, your support in signing this petition would be incredibly appreciated and valued.

Thank you