[Fearnlove]

Can the Kaplan users comment on how the videos on this site fit with the book, do they complement each other well or is it difficult to reconcile them both?

Thanks

[Fearnlove]

Hi Will, head on over to the ‘Ask the tutor’ forum for F7- it’s been asked there and it seems there are differences…. in one post Mr Little (presumably the author of the notes) says he hasn’t looked at the UK exam for 10 years.

[Fearnlove]

@fanwarrior said:
…There were a lot of easy marks and the people who fail will mostly be question spotters. Most of it was straight out of the textbook. Nice and straightforward.

BPP by any chance? Do correct me if I’m wrong.

It’s not really fair to make a judgement on the people that fail- you can’t see a single examiner report without seeing them saying it’s a bad idea so I don’t know why anyone would. You’ll see lots of people in these pages that didn’t do it and struggled.

[Fearnlove]

@nickmar said:
Those who studied BPP for this exam were seriously favoured by the examiner…

Those two questions sum up 20 marks…enough to turn a 30-pointer paper to a pass. So am I wrong to feel that the examiner has seriously favoured those studying BPP? Is this fair to the other students?
I don’t know what is ACCA’s responsibility for the content of both providers…but shouldn’t they at least ensure that both groups have the pontential to score full marks by whichever book they use (after all, they are both ACCA-approved as far as I know)??

I’m afraid they are just going to say that students have to ensure that they cover all the content in the syllabus, and can’t be held responsible for the providers failing us. They could even go one step further and say that they offer a guide to students as to their grading of providers with the platinum / gold statuses.

Given we can assume there are financial factors behind who becomes platinum / gold, by having this many marks favouring the platinum providers they run the risk of scandal in my eyes, so I almost think that this has to be coincidental.

Who would pick Kaplan in future? I want to be able to attack 100% of a paper, not 80%. Those of us that had to get creative wasted time doing so, impairing other answers.

I think the only way we would be heard is if the questions weren’t in the syllabus. They probably all are

[Fearnlove]

BPP also had the SHIP mnemonic for the differences between services and manufacturing. (Oh look, 4 letters in your mnemonic for 4 marks in the exam, enjoy those, BPP guys!)

Kaplan was insufficient if all these points are in the syllabus.

[Fearnlove]

@darlene82328 said:
I heard the previous examiner was sacked because the pass rate was too low. Certainly this one should be sacked as well

Not sure about that, would love to know if someone knows for sure what happened.

Here are the pass rates for F5, didn’t Ann Irons start from Dec 2010? If so then it might be a safer assumption to guess the last examiner was replaced for making the exams too easy / he moved on as a natural progression:

PASS RATES FOR PAPER F5
Dec 2007 34
Jun 2008 28
Dec 2008 30
Jun 2009 41
Dec 2009 52
Jun 2010 57
Dec 2010 41
Jun 2011 37
Dec 2011 38

I can’t wait to see the rate for this June to see if I am sitting a harder paper than normal or whether I am just in the that usual 60% that fails!

[Fearnlove]

Let’s just say Ann Irons is tough. I never had a time problem with any of the past papers (I did them as mocks and scored well) but like lots of people I just couldn’t get started with whole sections of questions.

It’s not that she has gone off-syllabus (although I didn’t read anything explicit on services vs manufacturing and whether there would be need for standard costing when TQM employed) it’s just that she picked some really minor topics and made them huge, missing huge chunks of the syllabus off.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but target costing appeared in 2 questions. Never seemed to be enough material on TQM to warrant this many marks in an exam.

The other thing is the way she hides the requirement so well it hurts. It’s not enough to know the calculation steps, I found it tough to apply my knowledge to the question to see what she wanted from me.

I look forward to the slating she will give me in the report, probably accusing me of question spotting even though I went in thinking I knew almost all the material.

This is the first ACCA paper I have sat and I’m questioning carrying it on

[Fearnlove]

Thanks again, I’ll just skim the F3 material in that case and worry less about the order they’re taken in!

[Fearnlove]

4 by June sounds tough! I’m just starting out too so I’m afraid I don’t have any advice for you, but I wondered which 2 you were planning to take after F2 and F3 are done?

All the best!

[Fearnlove]

Hi Alkemist, thanks a lot for your insight. I actually don’t have an exemption for F4, so looking more at your route through- is taking them in order the most common route? I had no idea F6 was so mean it needs to be taken alone! Are there any reletavely ‘easy’ ones after F3?

I thought F5 and F9 together would make sense, did you find you were disadvantaged having not been fresh on F5 when you got to F9?

One last question and I’ll leave you in peace! Would you say I should avoid reading F3 (exempt but will read it) until I need to study F7, or is understanding of F3 important to the ones in-between?

Thanks again, I’m new to this with no students/members where I am so this kind of opinion is hard to come by!

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