http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/2020/12/eqe-2021-further-details-on-examination.html
The EPO has released the first detailed information for candidates on the arrangements for the online pre-EQE and EQE next year. Full details can be read here. The examinations are scheduled to take place the week of 1 March 2021.
The online exams will be taken using the dramatically named “LockDown browser”, which candidates are being advised to log in to 20 minutes before the exam.
| Lockdown kitten |
One of the challenges faced by the organisers of the UK exams this autumn was how to facilitate the use of screen breaks during the exam. In the end, the PEB chose merely to increase the length of the exam and leave it to candidates to take the breaks themselves. The organisers of the EQE are taking a different approach, and the longer exams will include enforced long breaks of 20-45 minutes. The pre-EQE will be split into four parts whilst Papers C (Opposition) and D (Law) of the EQE will be split into two parts. Crucially, each part will have to be completed before the start of the next break. The information and questions will be released for the next part only after the break. Practising timings for the exam is therefore going to have to constitute a significant component of revision, as will not obsessing about mistakes one might have made in the previous part of a paper. The full schedules of breaks for each exam can be seen here.
A consequence of including the breaks is that the longer exams will last many hours. Papers C and D, for example, will be 6 hours. On the plus side, Papers A and B will be on separate days. Taking the exam online also thankfully means that candidates in the UK can at least be confident that full Artic gear will not be needed to survive the frozen conditions of the examination venue (as was the case in a legendary EQE year). For all papers (including papers A and B) candidates will also be permitted unscheduled breaks that are incorporated into the full examination time.
Documents for printing will be made available 10 minutes before the start of each exam. Only certain documents may be printed (e.g. the claims and the description for Paper B, but not the client letter). Oddly, Paper C will also be split into two parts. It is unclear to this Kat how an opposition paper could be split in this way. We await further information on this. For Paper C, candidates will be permitted to print all parts of the paper except the claims (why not the claims?).
Thankfully, the EQE is not a closed book exam, and thus there is no need for invigilators to check candidates rooms for banned items before the exam, as was supposed to be the case in the online UK exams. The UK approach was not, in any case, entirely successful. During the FD4/P6 examination, for example, an invigilator accidently locked candidates out of Zoom Room 3. Candidates were only able to join the Zoom meeting shortly before the exam, leaving no time for room sweeps.
The organisers of the EQE will have the benefit of being able to learn from the experiences of the PEB online exams (the result of the candidate survey for which we await). Candidates will undoubtedly have many questions about how the online EQE will work. Whilst the latest examination information stresses that the syllabi of the exams will remain the same, the new timings will take practise, and the hope is that the examination secretariat will provide example papers for candidates at the earliest opportunity.
A discussion on the new exam information can be found over on DeltaPatents.
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