*** F5 June 2012 Exam was … Comments and Instant Poll ***

@bhav101 said:

I tell you what, why dont you sit my ATT tax exams and I will sit your F5 exam just for fun. Second thoughts thats a bit of a backward step for me and far too much of a forward step for you. Besides I’m sure if you did decide to sit an exam there would be far too much scrutiny in terms of “if it was relevant to what you will be doing in a work place” – rather than knuckling down and getting the task done.

Or is that a challenge too much? 😉

Ah, city calling?
Great! Perhaps we can catch up and have a drink after work today… I am just about to finish :)) yep, “Friday lates” !!

With regards to the tax exam, well, may be it won’t be such a huge step forward after all, since tax is what I do daily, although perhaps a different angle (i deal with international structuring mostly and very little with the uk system)

Anyway, I did not mean to make enemies here and frankly, good for you for being such an optimist.
You seem a genuinely nice person, and I am sure you had the best of intentions when you posted your response here.
As you rightly said, it’s not really fair to compare different sittings due to different style, examiner etc. But then perhaps it’s not fair either to say that we have not studied long and good enough, as many of us did put in an awful lot of hours and effort.

I still have every hope of passing, so wish me luck.

Totally agree

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.

June 2012 F5 question paper was completely irrational one. What topic was asked to test by the examiner was not clear. Is it intentional to maximize profit by ACCA? ACCA is very much concern to increase their exam sitter but not to the degree. They are over estimating their ACCA degree which is actually not. I am intending to switch my target to another professional degree, to save wasting of my money. I think you should also do this.

I can’t believe how hard December 2011 F5 was and how hard this paper appears to be?

yet, if you go through the previous few years sittings they all seem fairly rational, the same things pop up every now and then etc.

but these last 2 exams just seem like a nightmare – almost like the person setting the paper doesn’t want us to pass

I passed F1-F4, F6-F9, P3 not bad, however F5 was hard for me. I analysed F5 examiner …

Ann studied law both at degree level and professional level before going on to train as a chartered accountant with Coopers & Lybrand in Newcastle in 1995 (now PricewaterhouseCoopers, PwC). After completing her accounting qualification, she taught a variety of subjects full-time at a leading tuition provider. Ann’s subjects included auditing, financial accounting, management accounting, tax and law. She then spent a short period back in practice, working for KPMG, and gaining more invaluable practical experience before returning to teaching.

Ann became an examiner for ACCA in 2003, on two CAT not ACCA papers – ‘Paper 1: Financial accounting‘ and ‘Paper 10: Managing finances’ – eventually focussing purely on the ‘Managing finances’ paper.

Since she Ann F5 examiner pass rates dropped dramatically… my question : Ann suitable for this position?!?!?

@logbrevno said:
Based on her results, one of the lowest pass rates, hope she will leave ACCA

BAD WORKMEN QUARREL WITH THEIR TOOLS.

F5 is a very easy exam.
I can tell you if you are not fully prepared for F5 then it will be disaster for you. But the preparation is not like a student, you have to be master for F5 then it be like full preparation. Because in the exam you will get only 3hours or 180 minutes.
Within this time if you want to answer 100 mark or 5 questions it will take
(180/5)= 36 minutes per question.
Without proper preparation you will not be able to manage the time.
Most of the students make common mistakes that they think F5 only for
Mathematical based but it is totally wrong idea.
If you see the December 2011 question and June 2012 question of F5
there is only 30% is Mathematical or Numerical and rest of the
70% is theoretical.
Students don’t have theoretical very good preparation for theory their
exam was disaster. You have to be master in theory.
Then it will be easy for you and you will be able to finished it on time.

It was fine…a little unusual perhaps. 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. Good Luck everyone 🙂

https://www.webropolsurveys.com/Answer/SurveyParticipation.aspx?SDID=Uni515698&SID=00d3f9c8-4b63-4208-a562-d6935136d485&dm_i=47A,UNT9,A07W1,2IRR1,1&dy=477169486

I urge everyone to fill in this. It is ACCA official feedback on the june 2012 sitting.

They take this into consideration prior to marking is done

@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.

@roydodge said:
It seems that most of the students who complained about the June F5 exam were doing so on the grounds that the questions were not what they expected. Maybe we should ask: who gives them these expectations? Nothing beyond the syllabus was examined.

The student who claimed that BPP students had an advantage (Nickmar) presumably had not noticed that Kaplan had a very interesting commentary on target costing in the Health Industry on pages 26/27 of their 2012 edition; in fact it is even possible to surmise that Ann Irons had based Question 2 entirely on the text in the Kaplan book. As for the complaints about sales forecasts based on a time series in Question 3 it is ridiculous to suggest that this question was unfair; a question using much the same technique had been set in F5 for December 2009 and most courses include a question that was set in the former 2.4 paper where the details are very similar to the question set by Ann in this June exam. Further, time series is supposed to be studied in F2 under the revised syllabus, although there could be some students who studied F2 when this subject was excluded.

The exam was tough but it was fair and there were plenty of places where a well-prepared student who had no pre-conceived notions about what would be examined could score enough marks to pass.

Dear Sir,
I can’t understand, how u compare Q3 Jun’12 with Q3 Dec’09! It’s really ridiculous!!
I only found a one question on time series in the entire Kaplan exam kit, that is Q3 Dec’09. I’m not sure, where u get a question on time series in the former 2.4 paper.

The exam wasn’t tough, but it was ridiculous and totally unfair.

Let’s talk about Q4 Jun’12.
The examiner asked us to prepare a statement which reconciles budgeted contribution to actual contribution in as much detail as possible.
“Untill now, Lock Co has had a market share of 25%. In the month of May, however, the market faced an unexpected 10% decline in the demand for locks.”
What does the examiner mean by this statement?
Do we need to calculate market size and market share variances? or what?

Don’t try to make us fool.
This exam paper was absurd. No doubt about it.