ACCA Administrative Review explained for students who had a marginal fail, scored 48-49 marks.
If you are unhappy with your exam result, then you can ask the ACCA for an administrative review.
This review will NOT mean that your exam is remarked.
The ACCA will only check that the marks have been added up and recorded correctly.
They will also tell you whether each question passed or failed, but they will NOT tell you the marks for each question.
The fee for ACCA administrative review is £52
(This includes FIA, ACCA and Dip IFR exams)
If you would like to request an administrative review you can now submit your request using our online service at myACCA. Alternatively, you can complete the form (see ‘Related documents’) and submit to:
There is possibly no fairness in Acca marking and as the world is clear to us all, there ain’t fairness anywhere in the world.
When you get your fail mark after 99.9% commitment to preparation, accept you weren’t lucky this time. Try again, you mayb lucky next time.
Anything that involves human decisions can NEVER be total free of error and unfairness in some way. Me I failed, relaxed abit, came back and passed some, then failed some and surely I wil complete it.
If you passed some papers since you started Acca, then why think you being failed intentionally. Why didn’t they start failing you from the beginning. And if you give up now, then you have Wasted all the money and time you gave to Acca before, you Never want to do that. Keep on keeping on.
Hi everyone,
I am just curios if anyone here has been at my place.
I failed the exam with 49% and I took the administrative revuew. The answer is that the results are correct and the feedback says ‘Pass’ at all the three questions.
How can it be that I pass all the three questions but the result is a Fail?
There must be some contact detail(s) in the communication from ACCA so you can ask ACCA directly.
Duplicate post deleted – see https://opentuition.com/topic/mitigating-circumstances-query
One would fail in AA for following parameters:
1. In the objective section, you must obtain 25 to 30 marks
** Important, true for all the subjective papers **
If you are experienced, DO NOT write your language (How kuch ever professional is that).
Read the answers of previous exams at ACCA portal, write in the same way.
My son and me both appeared for AA. Had same paper. Solved all the questions.
He mugged ACCA Website answers. Wrote in SAME Way.
I wrote same answers, just in my words (doesn’t mean some country language)
He got 58, I got 48.
Btw, since my son doesn’t have experience, I adviced him to follow ACCA Sample answering.
I have serious doubt on how, subjective questions are marked. Looks like the checkers don’t apply their brains but just follow answer template.
However, I am willingly doing ACCA, nobody forced me so I am accepting it as it is and moving ahead.
Next attempt, I am not writing anything of own experienced language and example but just copying ACCA Specimen answer in my brain.
That’s what they want, though personally I don’t agree.
I have been failing one of P level exams 4 times, even when the last time I was completely prepared and wrote everything . After 4 times I decided to change the exam to SBR, which includes more calculations,so that it can be more objective assessment. I scored 49! Passed on the part of calculations, which is objective, but failed on subjective parts. I filed for a review and of course they said the score is correct 49. I have no more trust in this organisation. I don’t think that those who do assessments look at the core of the answer, they are probably looking into very narrow possibilities of the predifined answers. I have many years of experience in those areas and studied for those exams. But I don’t think those who check the result have a proper understanding of the matter. I think that Acca is not worth the efforts and money. There are much more valuable and fair certifications than that.
Yes, same situation with me. I used to spent few weeks and have passed the exam, but took 9 month to prepare one paper then failed with 38. That’s ridiculous. I finished all questions and I believe did well in the questions
The only thing I can say is that after reading the previous posts by jeyne and Jens, I don’t feel alone anymore. I thought it was just me because the same exact thing happened, probably even worse.
I did not bother with paying for that Admin review because it sounds like utter BS to begin with. What do they think students will expect? That they say “hey sorry we messed up and you passed, never mind that you had to pay almost double the price for one exam”??
My worst experience was with the P1 paper.
In the first sitting I ended up focusing on my other subjects leaving only 2 days to study for P1, for the very first time, and yet I managed to almost pass getting 44%. So let me be clear, there was no tuition involved, just a total of 2 days self-study to achieve that mark on a first attempt. If you think that is unbelievable then read what happened next.
The next time I was unemployed and therefore had more time to study with up-to-date BPP study materials for almost 2 months day and night, and the result achieved was 31%! Moral of the story: study less and score higher?
I felt very comfortable with all key elements of the syllabus and, with the exam requirements carefully read on the big day, the exam gave me ample opportunities to demonstrate and apply my knowledge to achieve at least 50% even in the worst case.
It boggled my mind so much as to how I can get 31% that I lost all confidence in knowing how to approach next, even with all the “what to do if you fail” guides.
The most frustrating thing is the amount of hypocrisy present with the lack of transparency and assurance of the marking process.
correct that body is not transparent at all
Dear all,
I would like to ask, if there is any possibility of having your results recalculated or getting to see your answer booklet?
Here is my story: I was very surprised with my result (fail, I was not even close to the pass mark). The funny thing was that 1) I solved all questions and was quite confident I did well 2) After the exam I compared my answers with a few other participants – we came to the same results/conclusions. They all passed, and passed with very good results.
After receiving my low score, I made a request for administrative review. The answer came within 24 hours, bringing another surprise. According to the table I received, only 1 out of 5 questions was marked as pass, 4 out of 5 were marked as fail. This is just strange.
I truly do not know, what to make of it.
Is there any point in appealing to Examination Appeals Committee?
Is there any way you can get your answers re-checked?
Have any of you been in a similar situation?
Thank you very much in advance.
Joanna, first of all, I’m sorry to hear that you have failed the exam
However, let me point out to you that I have NEVER EVER heard of a successful administrative review in all the years that I have taught ACCA and I believe that that same comment applies to all the other tutors (John, Ken, Tax Tutor, Kim, P2D2)
We have, in aggregate, more than 200 years teaching experience
My advice is to get right up, shake yourself down and start right over again (to quote a very old song)
Save your money and move on with hopefully a better result in June
OK?
Mike,
thank you very much for help.
It seems I will need a few days to pull myself together and get back to work.
I am not sure, whether to register for June session, this case has scared me off a bit (I’ve never failed an exam before, my average score was around ~80%, I was pretty sure I did well, I read all the articles and examinator remarks to grasp the idea of the exam, I practised a lot, I still do not understand how it happened that almost all tasks were marked as fail).
Well… It’s a pity there is no possibility to have your actual answers verified once more. I won’t waste the money on the additional review, but get myself something nice instead.
Life 🙂
Thanks once more for your post
I failed @48 in afm, i was so confident, should i go for administrative reviwe or not?
I am a finalist and have failed AFM for the second time in Dec 2018. This time with a ridiculous low mark of 36. I do not have a problem with failing this exam even a second time as it is demanding and it has to be. However, this time, even using the worst case approach to reflect on my performance gives me a result in the middle or even in the higher end of the forties.
The entire exam is available for download on the ACCA website already, so is the examiner’s report. No matter how I look at it, there is something wrong this time.
Unfortunately, searching this forum there doesn’t seem to be a single case where an administrative review resulted in a change of marks. Does this mean the marking process of ACCA has a zero error rate even though marking around half a million exams worldwide every year?
I come to my own conclusions!
This thread goes back almost 7 years to February 2012
I first contributed to the thread in August 2012 and John Moffat in February 2013
Since those dates, both John and I have repeated countless times that you should save your money because your result will NOT change.
All that your money will buy is confirmation that the score awarded to you “has not changed”
Read the entire thread for yourself. There is not a single contribution that says “YES!
I paid for an administrative review and they increased my score”
I repeat, there is not a single example of that happening
Accept the result, move on and save your money
And sorry for being so apparently uncaring / brutal!
Why cant we just get the reviews after results soo that we see were we got it all wrong?
I have been reading the threads, I have to agree with the tutors. I have passed a few exams first time and failed some also. The examiners are there to give you as many marks as the can. Even if your answers do not make sense, they still try and look for method marks. How do I know this because in my F5, I know one one questions we completely incorrect it was only that the marker saw the way i presented the question i received the marks.
Just think of a fail, as I must try harder next time. Do not do an admin review I have done one and it is a pointless exercise. If your really want to be truthful getting 48% or 49%, is not a marginal fail. Its a big fail that means you missed it by 52% or 51%.
Remember at Uni 50% would get you a C, the F papers to me are on the same level as University exams. Just keep trying everyone, don’t give up no matter how many times you fail.
I paid for an administrative review for 104 GBP from ACCA on two papers P2 & P3 which I consistently get 45-48 % on.
It states there will be some feedback and there was none of the sort. I issued a complaint as they asked me to submit a further appeal, with a cost of 104 GBP.
You get no new information about how you performed. Just the words PASS and FAIL. I have shown my disappointment, and I would suggest NOT to bother.
By reading all comments here it seems like exam papers been marked by Gods and not people who can make mistakes. It feels like main purpose of ACCA make as much money as possible, no matter how. And we students have no rights, no satisfaction of learning. It helps a lot if we know where did we go wrong and what are weak points. Otherwise it feels like a big spam, specially with admin review. After all ACCA is providing a service to us and we should have SOME rights. If you can’t provide a proper feedback to each student, fee should be 5 times less than it is at the present.
I rather have 75% pass mark (as CIMA does) and no human decision involved as now days you can’t trust in anything that involved money and human together.
Alexandra, compliantly agree with you. Feel the same. ACCA is interested in people failing exams, more money, more profit, stable customers, stable income – perfect business plan. I got fed up as well with this.