Advisers frustrated with NZCFS L5 marking

Christchurch-based Chris Boon has two FAPs; Adelphi Insurance Brokers in risk and Adelphi Financial Services in the mortgage space, employing up to 24 advisers.

“In the last 20 years I’ve brought new people into the industry and trained them from scratch. I have no problem with the regulatory change, but the time taken to get somebody qualified is frustrating.”

He says an adviser who submitted their final assessment to the Open Polytech on Aug 16 had their work marked on Oct 3. The tutor had given a verbal assurance that they had passed six weeks before but the adviser was never able to get through to them after that. The course cost $2600.

Ryan Li, director of Christchurch-based Cox Ferguson Financial Services says there have been instances of advisers experiencing “significant wait times of up to two months” for assessments to be marked, which has affected their ability to move forward.

Open Polytechnic executive director academic services, Neil Carroll, says there is a monthly meeting to approve final grades to learners who have completed their course, after which the grades are released. He says if a learner provides evidence that they require their graduation certificate before that, they can be added to a fast-track list.

“Open Polytech can then process their request outside our monthly cycle. We use this fast-track process if a learner lets us know they need their final course results earlier due to employment, visa or legal requirements.” A letter from the adviser’s FAP would constitute evidence for this.

Boon says none of his advisers had heard of the “fast track process.” Open Polytech says learners aren’t made explicitly aware and it’s up to them to contact the polytech.

2023 struggles

Last year Boon had six advisers go through Otago Polytechnic, the Open Polytechnic and Strategi, all of whom emailed him about their frustrations with the process. He has had similar conversations with another six.

He says when advisers queried education providers on marking delays, answers ranged from, ‘the person marking the course lives overseas and there’s a time difference’ to ‘the course has an August finish date, so even if you’ve done all your papers in six weeks, you have to wait until the next six weeks until the end of the course.’

“We had one guy where it had a very serious impact. The close-off was March 15 last year; he worked really hard but it took him two months to get simple papers marked. He wasn’t able to work and it had a massive impact on him.”

Another adviser emailed Boon saying, “Lecturers had very little compassion regarding these timeframes and advised that ‘everyone’ was subjected to their marking times etc. I pleaded mental health concerns, due to not being able to work and the pressure this was putting on me, which were not addressed at all.”

Book learning

Advisers have also found marking highly subjective, casual and inconsistent. Boon has had advisers who were enrolled with different organisations but who studied together. They provided roughly the same answer to an assignment only to get a pass from one organisation and fail from the other.

He says two highly qualified people going through NZCFS found the correct answers returned with marking were “very textbook and not very practical.”

“The tutors doing the marking seem to have no experience. They only want textbook answers instead of real world advice,” was the feedback from one adviser.

“80% of the course material has nothing to do with what I do for a living. I had to work with scenarios where I owned a KiwiSaver, mortgage FAP etc. The course work felt very disconnected to reality.”

Another who had completed the course said, “There will always be a disconnect between what organisations can teach and how to effectively implement that knowledge. Additionally, it would be interesting to know whether the moderators responsible for grading have several years of experience themselves.”

Providers’ respond

Otago Polytechnic believes it is meeting market needs while working within the parameters of the programme accreditation, says a spokesperson.

The Otago NZCFS L5 programme is online and lasts 16 weeks with scheduled online classes for students. This is an NZQA approved timeframe for all polytechnic business divisions offering the certificate.

“We advertise this programme as being online with online classes, not as a self-paced option. Students are grouped into cohorts and complete the same assessment by the same due date. To be fair to all students and to ensure academic integrity, we release results and feedback at the same time to all students.”

Strategi director David Greenslade, says Strategi permits students to start the course as soon as they are ready and marks assignments as they are submitted.

He says Strategi doesn’t have capacity bottlenecks. “We have fewer enrolments now than what we had in the peak years, but we have still had so far this year a total of  930 enrolments.”

Strategi has seven assessors and since the beginning of this year until September, has completed 8721 assessments. Greenslade says one marker lives offshore but has a Masters in Education with an average turnaround time of two to four days.

Residing offshore doesn’t impact assessment times, he says.

Strategi’s student handbook states it has a maximum of 15 days to mark an assignment and of those marked this year, only three exceeded that timeframe.

“On average our turnaround time is 2-7 days with more than 50% of assessments being completed in three or fewer days.”

He says assessment times that have taken 7- 15 days were due to an investigation into plagiarism, an ongoing discussion between the assessor and the student regarding the assignment and the assessor explaining what is required to be answered, and poor quality submissions which showed a student was struggling.

“In those instances, we pause assessments and ask the student to attend one of our regular support sessions. These are designed to help the student understand what they are required to do.”

Open Polytech says last year it had one New Zealand-based marker who visited another country for three months and continued to use the online marking system to work with an average marking turnaround time of eight days.

“We use an online marking system at Open Polytechnic. In the case of a written assessment, a learner uploads their assessment to our learning management system, and it is then distributed online to our markers, who are subject matter experts.

“Once an assessment is marked, it is uploaded back into the learning management system for the learner to see their result and look at any feedback. As long as a marker has access to their device and the internet, they can log in and complete marking of assessments regardless of where they are.”

Boon has shared his frustrations with the Financial Markets Authority. Anita Frazer, head of licensing and regulatory services said the FMA continually meets with training providers to ensure they’re performing to the standard required.