Even when I did O levels (in the days before mobile phones etc) they were always keen to have the question papers returned at the end of the exam - partly to ensure that anyone else sitting the same paper later (either due to differences in scheduled exam times, or due to delays caused by illness etc) couldn't gain an unfair advantage, and also because the exam people would often sell 'past papers' for a tidy sum to future candidates as study aids - and didn't want that market undermined.

   - Andy.

I did the course and exam over twenty years ago when everyone had the same questions and you had to hand write the answers, it was a three hour exam and I didn’t complete the full exam because I physically couldn’t hold the pen and write due to severe writers cramp. The tutor, who was the Head of Department at Dudley College, sat next to me to take the exam having tutored us without actually having the qualification himself had exactly the same problem.

We both passed despite this problem of not being able to physically complete a three hour exam that required hand written answers.

Is it now completed onscreen with every entrant having a different set of questions like other C&G exams?

It is quite difficult to set exam questions, and the 18th edition exam is a case in point. The question bank has questions of wildly varying difficulty, so some candidates are more "lucky" the others. Whether this is random, or an artifact of the software (3 easy ones then 3 difficult) I do not know, but quite a few candidates do worse or better than I might expect, from the same teaching.

Was this a written exam Lyle or a computer one, I suspect the latter, and they want to use it again and again.

Many years ago, in the days of the surgical Primary Fellowship, the first sift was by MCQ. The best chance of passing was to attend Prof. Slome's intensive course. Just prior to the exam, his students were issued with a stamped addressed postcard with a number on it. On completion of the exam, whilst the papers were being collected, the candidates' task was to memorize the question corresponding to the number. Then, on exiting the building, the question was written (as best could be remembered) on to the postcard and posted back to the learned Professor.

I don't think that the College liked it, but it was not forbidden.

When I did C&G 2394/5, the training establishment did their best to keep the practical set up concealed - i.e. window in the door covered over and the room kept locked.

It was a 3-hour written paper. Very intense with absolutely no time to review your work. There is also a project to complete with a time allocation of around 40hours. It really is a great course with lots of guys putting significant effort in to their course work only to be thwarted by the time pressure in the exam. Pass or not, there is no one who thinks the course is anything other than worthwhile. 
It is one of the last “old-fashioned” assessments left in the suite of electrical installation qualifications. I do hope it is not softened too much but there are likely suitable ways to make it less of an artery buster and still keep the esteem.

In that case there is no need to keep the questions secret as presumably the whole country does the exam at the same time, supposedly like GCSEs etc, and like 0 and A levels used to be. The old (long gone) CEI part 2 was the killer, the syllabus was huge and the areas to ask questions beyond many candidates knowledge range. Then you might be able to pass as a CEng!

Andy

I do not know how you managed to do the 2396 20 years ago as the first exam was in  2012. I know this as I had to get it myself as at the time my college had a policy of you had to have the qualification to teach it so I sat the exam and did the project myself.

You may have sat the Level 3 2400 exam 20 years ago but the 2396 Design and Verification has bits added to it and is now a Level 4 (Foundation Degree level ) qualification.

It is good old fashioned 3 hour written exam where you are able to use set books as reference sources to do the exam. Afterwards you have to complete in your own time without assistance a project having been given a brief and drawings. If your project does not fill an A4 lever arch file then you have not done enough!

I did my C certificate 100,000 years ago. I still have some sample questions many of which would be more complex than those appearing on the current 2396. I am sure the criteria for designating the level of qualifications have been modified over the years so I am not so sure that Andy’s 2400 level 3 is necessarily of a lesser level of complexity than the 2396 level 4.

plenty of folk failed the 2400 and many fail the 2396, so if you have either qualification, I think you should have a well-deserved pat on the back!

in any event, it is great to see guys coming back for qualifications that are stretching and not demanded as some minimum standard by the industry. 

The C&G Design, Erection and Verification was indeed the 2400 when I did it in July 2003 and it was actually nineteen years ago that I did it, like the four City and Guilds electrical I completed prior to that, syllabuses and content have changed as have the qualification code numbers.

I benefited when I did the Wiring Regulations, Inspection & Testing and Design, Erection & Verification courses from being with a group of extremely competent electricians, the sugar beet factory was closing at Kidderminster and the sixteen electricians who worked there were being made redundant and needed to update their qualifications to get jobs elsewhere, the factory had its own power station that ran through the sugar beet campaigns generating a couple of megawatts at eleven thousand volts, they ran and maintained the entire set up so certainly knowledgable  and experienced classmates to bounce off.

Bear in mind as well, the internet was in its infancy and we couldn’t just keep doing internet searches to find articles and resources such as videos to help us through the course, we either had to buy books or borrow them from other electricians or libraries, I remember walking around to an electricians house a couple of streets away from mine and borrowing his set of IET Guidance Notes because I had hit a stumbling block completing part of my project, then spending a hour talking it through with him.

The IET were  already putting fillable pdf electrical certification on this website back then, I stopped the computer skills lecturer who was doing the European Computer Driving Licence course in a corridor at college one evening to ask him how to to do something with the IET pdf’s and he replied “I don’t know, you’re working at a lot higher level than I teach at” as I remember it I used the IET forms as part of my project whilst everyone else hand wrote theirs.

Different days in many ways, but not others!

until recently I still had the 2400 drawing for the project, I think it was an imaginary firm called "Barrins Davis" or something and we had to design the electrical supply disboard/subboard etc etc and the circuit routes and lighting with automatic lighting thrown in some locations. I think that was about 1989/1990 if I remember correctly.