CIPS has just announced that, with immediate effect, it is removing all of the Principal Market Reports from its website. These were a valuable source of general feedback information about each exam and so here we explain their rationale and look at what can be learned about these reports.
What was a Principal Marker Report?
The Principal Marker (PM) Reports were a brief summary report produced by the lead examiner for each essay-based (CR) exam. The reports did not contain a lot of information and nor did they give away any of the details of the exam, but they did provide some useful feedback for learners.
At the end of each exam, once the results had been published, the PM Report provided a brief piece of feedback to explain how the exam had been received and what learning points could be drawn from it. In particular, they explained what good essay responses contained and what was missing from the lower scoring answers.
The PM Reports provided a useful reminder for exam candidates of the things the CIPS assessment team is looking for in a good exam essay answer.
Why is CIPS stopping these?
CIPS has recently told all study centres (March 2026):
“To maintain the security and integrity of our assessments, we are unable to publish any details of the exam tasks. As a result, the reports that had previously been available were necessarily high‑level and could only provide general feedback on common factors that influence candidate performance.
We will continue to support centres and candidates through secure guidance and resources that do not compromise the confidentiality of assessment materials.”
This explanation does not directly address the reasons as to why the PM Reports have been withdrawn, but there is a suggestion about a loss of confidentiality and integrity. CIPS is regulated by Ofqual (the UK regulator for qualifications) and as part of that commitment, it is keen to maintain integrity in all of its assessments. This includes preventing any leak of information about the exam questions, marking scheme and/or answers from reaching the public domain.
This helps give us all confidence that exam information is secure.
What can we learn from this?
The reassurance that CIPS does everything possible to maintain the integrity and security of its exam information is good to hear. There were however several extremely helpful learning points about learner experiences and where problems were encountered.
To summarise many of the feedback points over the last seven years about the essay-based (CR) exams, CIPS has provided the following useful list of areas where some lower scoring exam candidates struggle to get the marks they might otherwise deserve:
Not addressing the specific task set. This is about making sure you answer the question that is being asked, not the question you think they’re asking. Candidates are reminded to scrutinise the question and make sure they answer every single element within it!
Weak exam technique. This is something we are extremely passionate about at Cordie and we provide a separate Exam Essay Writing Skills workshop that focuses on the techniques required to prepare high-scoring essay answers.
Failure to follow the command word resulting in an insufficient depth and/or breadth of responses. This particularly applies at the higher levels (e.g. Level 6) where candidates might be asked for an evaluation or an assessment, but only provide outline descriptive responses.
Gaps in knowledge or inadequate preparation. This is a common area of challenge for many candidates and why we at Cordie provide such comprehensive learning materials that cover every single element of the required learning content of the syllabus.
If you you would like to know more about how to succeed at preparing for essay-based exams and/or writing great essays in the CR exams, do please get in touch to find out more. All of our study classes include discussion about how to improve and enrich your answers. We also run separate workshops focused just on exam essay writing technique.
Please get in touch, we would love to hear from you!