APPEAL/SECOND REVIEW FOR ACCA OBU

Anyone who did Carillion for their organisation and has been failed and told this was not a suitable organisation for Topic 17 MUST appeal .

In Period 37 I had 3 students who used Carillion and all passed, and in P38 I had 5 people who submitted on Carillion (one of whom 1 got an A) however one was told:

“Because Carillion went into liquidation there was no adequate response to the emerging financial problems. For this reason Carillion is not the most suitable choice of company for RAP Topic 17”.

‘Emerging financial problems’ ???? Excuse me – but there had been signs of weak governance for YEARS and the Board response was to ignore them and pay themselves handsomely and pretend that ‘everything in the garden was rosy’: there was no impairment of goodwill, the deficit on the employees pension schemes were increasing, debts were rising, the cash was decreasing, the Auditors were negligent and failed to spot the aggressive accounting policies, short-sellers were shorting the shares and as my student who failed pointed out, institutional shareholders had for several years been divesting their shares.

No response then from the company at all then?

The House of Commons Report must also have got it all wrong then when they concluded that “The mystery is not that it [Carillion] collapsed, but how it kept going for so long

It means that your fail for IT has been reversed. If that was the only part of your report that failed it means that it will now be passed. If that was the only thing you failed overall then as this is now pass it means that you will have passed – but the last bit of the email is a bit confusing…..

My interpretation of the last bit is that however if you failed the SLS or presentation previously I think it means that although pending the change this may show as pass the changed grade will only affect your report – and any previous fails in SLS and presentation will remain – at least that’s what I think they are trying to say!

Then it looks from all of the evidence that you have passed and they will probably formally confirm this shortly. Let us know the outcome but in the meantime please chill baby, chill!

@GillianM and @trephena,

Alhamdulillah finally today OBU confirmed that I have passed in my RAP and it will take a while to amend my pass result. Thank you for ur supports…

It takes up to 10 working days before they tell you whether your appeal is admissible or not. If it is admissible – great, you need to wait extra 20 working days now. so if you sent your appeal on Friday 11th, then you will get:

– initial response by Oct 25th, and
– final response by Nov 22nd.

@GillianM @Trephena

Hope you are well,

I just needed clarification regarding the following

How exactly does the appeals procedure work?
Do I need to make a payment for this procedure?
What is the timeframe for the procedure?

Regarding the matter to be appealed, the following are the marker comments and my reasons for appealing;

1) ”You need to apply a wider range of ratios to your work. Currently there are only 6, with 2
very similar (Quick and current ratios). There is no consideration of efficiency ratios,
working capital ratios and limited application of risk ratios.”
a) The marker commented I have only done 6 ratios, which is not enough to cover the topic, when in fact I have done 8 ratios, they explicitly mention I have not done efficiency when I have.
b) They mention I have not done working capital ratios and in the same statement say my quick and current ratios (which are working capital ratios) are similar???

2) “On page 34 of the Information Pack it states that “It is not acceptable to edit a preprepared template for either the Research Report, spreadsheet or presentation (even if
this has been provided by your mentor)”. Your spreadsheet appears to be based on a
template that was created in 2015.”
a) So I worked on the same EXCEL FILE that my mentor provided and saved my work on it, however I changed the structure of the template and the file radically but still saved the file on the same excel (because of this the excel properties shows as created by my mentor). Is this appealable? I have the original file my mentor sent and my file, can I show the differences and argue my case?

Lastly if the appeal for the excel part [(2)] is heldup, is it possible they change the fail for the part mentioned in [(1)] regarding ratios?

Sorry it was period 39 @trephena @GillianM

@trephena I apologize, I posted the same question to 3 forums as I wasn’t sure which forum was the correct one.

Very few appeals succeed because you cannot argue with ‘academic judgement’.

Investor ratios (ESP, P/E ratio) would be expected (and also gearing ratios). In essence you are questioning academic judgement as to which ratios are appropriate and therefore you are unlikely to be able to appeal successfully.

Regarding the spreadsheet unless you can prove you did the work this is open to doubt but possibly more likely to succeed here – it depends though on whether you set up the formulae or the mentor. They will have access to all the spreadsheets used by your mentor’s other mentees so yours would have to show it was significantly different especially in terms of formulas

If you succeed on one point it won’t quash the fail for both points -you need to succeed on both for the appeal to be upheld

The system is fixed -apart from in very clear cut situations e.g. they say your spreadsheet did not contain formulae and it did. Anything else they will say is your opinion and you are querying academic judgment.

In P38 one of my students was failed for referencing -the criteria were (but have subsequently been changed) – referencing is mostly absent. So we counted the number of instances where this was the case (i assess MBA dissertations so I have the right background to do this) and we came up with the FACTS that referencing was at least 71% present -so how could it by definition be mostly absent??

They still ignored the mathematical principle that a greater number by definition must be more than a smaller number and said we were querying academic judgment!

They use ‘academic judgment’ as a ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ card and it is just an excuse most of the time and cover for BAD marking

They have failed my RR on my failure of communication skills (presentation). I do not understand.

@ gillianm @trephena

Thank you for replying but I am still not able to understand where I should make the necessary changes . My doubt is the feedback is for self reflection which I passed and not for the communication skills including ppt. I referred the appendix for reasons for failing comm. skills and it seems the feedback will be for areas related ppt ( such as less no. Of slides etc.) My feedback seems to be for self reflection and that area is a pass for me so I dont have to submit my SLS. Correct me if I am wrong.

Thanks in Advance

You have failed the Presentation and NOT the self-reflection as the feedback shows:

Self reflection Pass
Communication skills Fail

Please refer to my previous post – you either need to appeal or rectify the situation if there was no online video presentation to the mentor

[Please be patient – I have my own students who are preparing their P41 submissions!}