The old CCNA certification exam expires on 30 September, 2013. In the past when academy students who had previously started training got stuck during a transition period, they were given a pretty sizable extension date to do the exam they were currently studying for. This was done with special codes.

Most students who start at the beginning of this year would finish (the old) CCNA by the end of the year, but would then be disadvantaged taking the new CCNA cert as my understanding is there are some big changes.

We can't offer the new later CCNA courses as they won't be ready by a mid-year start date. We could however, offer the old CCNA courses (such as Accessing the WAN) which would still have purpose if students could sit the old CCNA exam. Otherwise those students have a big gap for second half of the year courses that they can take, as there is no point teaching the old CCNA if there is no exam, and all of the new CCNA won't be ready by mid-year.

For example, if a student has finished Network Fundamentals and Routing Protocols and Concepts, there is no new CCNA part 3 and 4 ready for them to take mid-year (not even taking into account what they may have missed out on by taking the old part 1 and 2).

So to summarise, there needs to be a CCNA certification extension as in the past, for academy students currently part way through the old CCNA.