ACCA Resources – General Thoughts

Hi

I would be interested in getting the thoughts of fellow ACCA Student Members. My thoughts stem from a chap who is a fellow trainee in my place of work, he has failed an exam a few times and is really struggling. I want to get others thoughts on ACCAs methods for retaking.

ACCA don’t publish the past exam papers as they are sat and I cannot understand why. I know a thread was discussed on this a couple of years ago when they introduced 4 sittings. Let me revisit. Surely it is beneficial to all students, but especially those retaking, to be able to look at the marking scheme for a past paper, and the model answers to see where they went wrong? Currently they can only look at a hybrid paper from the 2 previous sittings. It can’t cost much to upload each exam sitting as a resource?

Secondly, why don’t the ACCA offer a feedback service? CIMA will give an individual feedback from an exam sitting so they can understand where they went wrong and study intelligently for the resit. Similarly ACA will give a student their marked exam paper back to review. ACCA will only go as far as telling you whether you passed or failed a question or syllabus area (depending if sittings Fs or Ps). I don’t see how this is helpful for students. Especially for heavily written based exams.

Cynically it makes me wonder whether ACCA have a threshold for how many students can pass, based on the results from a given sitting. For example if many people achieve 55%, they need to lift the barrier slightly in order that the pass rate doesn’t shoot up. After all, it is beneficial for the profession to not have too many qualify and reduce marketability.

Has anyone else thought about either of these things – or are struggling with a particular exam? I can’t believe I’m the only one who sees these holes in the process.