What is the best strategy for attempting question 1?

The key question is why you emphasise on Question 1 only. In the ACCA examination, you will win if you get 50 marks, regardless where you get them. Why does the examiner put a compulsory section of 60 marks? Why don’t he allow you to choose? The answer is quite simple. If he allows you to choose, you will not choose it because it is more difficult and complicated than any questions in Section B. In other words, getting one mark at Section A is more difficult than getting the same one mark from Section B.

The sure-win strategy for any examination with a passing mark is simply as follows:
1. Get the easiest marks first in order to accumulate a passing mark as soon as possible. Don’t be fooled by the 60 marks, which mean nothing if they are difficult to get. Where are the easiest marks? Of course, Section B and the first 20-30% marks on verbal writing. Although Section B cannot make you pass, it an facilitate you to get a pass quicker. Imagine that getting 20-25 easy marks from Section B and 10-15 easy marks from verbal writing. Your life in Section A will be easier. To conclude, attempt Section B first. Section A and complicated calculation will lock you down.

2. Don’t stop writing in the first 1.5 hours. This is the critical period to accumulate passing marks. If you have no idea for a part, jump to the others. You must have some ideas in some parts. The marker will not grant you any marks for thinking.

3. Allocate your time according to the marks distribution and avoid overrunning. This is one of the reasons that I don’t suggest to start with Section A because the computation there is complex. You will hardly give up when you engross yourself in the tedious calculation.

Finally, it must not be good to write “higher than”,”didn’t achieve”, or ”unable to meet” because it merely repeats the numbers in words. It is only better than write nothing. Instead, you should discuss the economic underpinnings, the implications, and the validity of the numbers.

I would like to clarify that I do not suggest anyone to spend 1.5 hour for Section B. My point 3 has mentioned to allocate time according to the marks.

I would illustrate it by contrasting 2009 Dec Q1 and P3.3 2007 Jun Q1. The 2009 one, a school scenario, should be adapted from the 2007 one, a legal firm case.

For the 2009 one, Part (ii) asks for performance evaluation. The answer there is bad because it largely tells what measures should be used for comparison. Unfortunately, some measures mentioned could not even be found in the case. To specify which measure is appropriate for the comment is a must but stating some measures not appeared in the question made the evaluation pointless. Most of the answer was not evaluation at all but merely repeated to tell the numbers in words.

For the 2007 one, Parts (b) and (c) are on performance evaluation. The answer , conversely, was good, It made a real comparison by investigating the reasons and the implications from the numbers. By comparing the 2 questions, you should know what should be done in commenting on the performance.

A good answer, especially a comment, must be built around an analytical framework. The usual framework at Q1 is either the Performance Pyramid (PP) or the Balanced Scorecard (BSC). You should start with the overall financial performance (e.g. ROCE, profits, etc) of the 2 organisations and then analyse why their performance is so and so. If you use BSC, the financial performance should be explained by customer, customer by internal process, internal process by learning and growth. If you use PP, you should also analyse according to the linkage among the elements in PP.

Finally, you should take a ‘why’ attitude in any comment. If you do so, you may find a lot of interesting issues not mentioned by the 2009 answer. For example, why did BEC have a higher staff turnover rates? How would it affect the quality of lecture and the development of educational materials? Why could JBC have more students at Marketing and same student number at Law even though its tuition fees was more expensive? You may explore more yourself.

I have taught in a university course with a syllabus same as F6 for 5 years. However, I keep on using the old ACCA F6 paper style with a compulsory Section A (55 marks) and Section B 45 marks with choices. I do not follow the new format with all compulsory because the students must fail in three-month study.

I ask them to work on Section B first although Section A has higher mark allocation. Of course, students are usually rebellious and some of them will work on Section A first. The results are 90% of them will fail against a 50% failure rate for those working on Section B first. It is a hard matter of facts. When re-sitting the examination, no one dares to work on Section A first again.

If you are knowledgeable on P5 or on any other papers, you can work in any order; otherwise, start with some easy and smaller tasks. When you are fresh in job, your supervisor will not assign you big and critical tasks. You will then have a higher chance to succeed. To be knowledgeable enough for any paper, it must not be a 6-month work, especially for working adults. Mastering knowledge in a paper is a life work but passing a paper is a 6-month mission.

if you are confident about question 1 and have mastered your timing you should have no problem with Q1 nonetheless i think i agree with sosologos

Thanks for your clarification

@belle said:
sosologos and princeacid,

your approaches have enlightened me 🙂 Thank you.

Glad to hear belle , If you do Q1 first, you won’t be disappointed!

all the best!

good thought metro1. That gives us another reason to do Q1 first!

I agree with priceacid, that it is best to do question 1 first.

However I also agree that more important than anything is to allocate time – not just between questions but also between the parts of questions.

Question 1 always has several parts to it, and it is very rarely that you need figures from previous parts to be able to attempt the later parts. It is better to have only part-finished all the parts than to have left some parts out completely.