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Badly balanced questions-Question 1 was mainly on Risk. Please note we are traning to be accountants not risk analysts, not yet! This question should have been section B optional question and not a section A question as this can be seen as a specialised question.
Scenarios are not related to the “real world” and questions were not clear. In a real world if anything was not clear or explained properly I would clarify this with person requesting/setting the task and further more we would have more than just 3 hours to deal with one real life scenario together with team of people around to help you.
The exam did not test us on our knowledge, but instead placed us with impossible challenge. You seem to forget that we are students not FD’s of major investment banks, therefore we do not have the experience to draw from!
Questions were very random-did not give us any clue to any structure.
As this was/is my final paper I was very well prepared, but nothing would have prepared me for this sitting! P5 will not be recommended to anyone as it is like a loose cannon.
ACCA must get their act together as it’s becoming a joke!
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Hey Guys, the ACCA survey on the exams asks for our comments on the exams. They might consider marking the papers fairly for us if you write how truely hard it was. so please write that you all thought this was a very very difficult paper to finish or even think of finishing in the given 3 hours. I also took the survey aswell. Thanx
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Dear Friends, Please check the Opentuition survey result, it shows that 29% of the students have voted that the exam was easy or ok. The passing percentage is roughly 30-33%. So still we (who are in the rest of 71%) have a chance to be pass. I have personal experience, even if you complain to ACCA, nothing will happen. So Stay relax, and like me, be ready for the next exam. ACCA P5 is always about luck.
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hi,
i have one message to contribute,some complained one exam centre and the next sitting the exam centre has changed. it shows that if the matter is true ACCA is listening to us.
thks
Hi guys,
I have also passed all 13 exams already and I have passed P6&P2 on first sitting so I don’t think I am exactly stupid.
This was my second attempt on P5 and I have studied hard – took number of days off to sit it, went to revision again, worked through the whole practice book from Kaplan. But nothing prepared me for Q1!!
I did not understand the question, I could not make any sense of the table. Because I wasn’t sure what I am doing, I did not finish it. I could not see how could I do EV, I could not do combined probability table due to not having probabilities accross as well, and actually stating that they cannot even guess it. So I went along with maximin, maximax and minimax regret, did explanations for the terms, calcs for the first 2 and decision, realised I am out of time and left it.
It is not only 19 marks for this, the part c/ relies on having number of different strategies, and 4 marks on structure. Which again you cannot do without the whole thing. Perhaps 2 for writing report and Introduction. So really it is 19+3+4 = 26 marks that rely on it.The thing is, I wasn’t sure what he wants from the question and the scenario and it is a lot of marks if you are not sure. Which I find so unfair. If I was presented with this situation in real life, I would not be after sleepless night due to stress, I would not have 1 hr to work on it, I would have colleagues to discuss best approach with, I would have further questions to clarify the situation.
The examiner thinks probably this is dead easy, because he is looking at it from other side, having as much time as he wants to think about it, in cozy office probably at home, realxed with a cuppa. And also looking at the position like “you always know what you are saying if YOU are saying it”. Doesn’t necesarilly mean others get you.
Q2 I hope I scored at least half, but not sure. There isn’t much on it in the books, I wasn’t exactly sure how to apply it in practice, they already had lots of KPi’s. What threw me was the very few and useless numbers the board had and quite detailed KPIs line managers had. I explained all lines of the pyramid (I had no idea it is done according to company, I thought it applies to all of them!! Oh damn!!) and worked from the “mission statement” the company issued).
I did Q4&5, I felt that Q4 (the store manager) I was repeating myself a lot in a&b, because I was advising improvements to remove the faults I named in the part a – obviously. So you are saying the same again. Q 5 I wrote so fast I am not even sure I will be able to read it, as I was really running out of time.
I really really don’t want to sit this again, I want to be done and get a life. But I do have the feeling I might be doing this again in June. In comparison, the June exam was easy!! I guess I was not ready for it as I should have been, due to doing P6 as well and that book has 1110 pages!!
(thought as long as you study hard you pass. There are no catches, no guessing questions, no ambigious questions. I have to say I find tax interesting, you shuffle numbers&rules around and you save people shed loads of money. Lot of knowledge required, but straight forward!)- Topics: 0
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hi,
for me the examiner just wanted to see where he stands in term of his level of knowledge compared to ordinary student who has not had experience working in this field.we all testify,that YOU ( the examiner ) are well above us …….. HAPPY NOW…….
just think for a while how many people had to suffer and are still suffering from this paper
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Yes Mr. Alex.. We are suffering .. Markers need to be fair this time …
I have also passed all 13 exams already and I have passed P6&P2 on first sitting so I don’t think I am exactly stupid.
This was my second attempt on P5 and I have studied hard – took number of days off to sit it, went to revision again, worked through the whole practice book from Kaplan. But nothing prepared me for Q1!!
I did not understand the question, I could not make any sense of the table. Because I wasn’t sure what I am doing, I did not finish it. I could not see how could I do EV, I could not do combined probability table due to not having probabilities accross as well, and actually stating that they cannot even guess it. So I went along with maximin, maximax and minimax regret, did explanations for the terms, calcs for the first 2 and decision, realised I am out of time and left it.
It is not only 19 marks for this, the part c/ relies on having number of different strategies, and 4 marks on structure. Which again you cannot do without the whole thing. Perhaps 2 for writing report and Introduction. So really it is 19+3+4 = 26 marks that rely on it.The thing is, I wasn’t sure what he wants from the question and the scenario and it is a lot of marks if you are not sure. Which I find so unfair. If I was presented with this situation in real life, I would not be after sleepless night due to stress, I would not have 1 hr to work on it, I would have colleagues to discuss best approach with, I would have further questions to clarify the situation.
The examiner thinks probably this is dead easy, because he is looking at it from other side, having as much time as he wants to think about it, in cozy office probably at home, realxed with a cuppa. And also looking at the position like “you always know what you are saying if YOU are saying it”. Doesn’t necesarilly mean others get you.
Q2 I hope I scored at least half, but not sure. There isn’t much on it in the books, I wasn’t exactly sure how to apply it in practice, they already had lots of KPi’s. What threw me was the very few and useless numbers the board had and quite detailed KPIs line managers had. I explained all lines of the pyramid (I had no idea it is done according to company, I thought it applies to all of them!! Oh damn!!) and worked from the “mission statement” the company issued).
I did Q4&5, I felt that Q4 (the store manager) I was repeating myself a lot in a&b, because I was advising improvements to remove the faults I named in the part a – obviously. So you are saying the same again. Q 5 I wrote so fast I am not even sure I will be able to read it, as I was really running out of time.
I really really don’t want to sit this again, I want to be done and get a life. But I do have the feeling I might be doing this again in June. In comparison, the June exam was easy!! I guess I was not ready for it as I should have been, due to doing P6 as well and that book has 1110 pages!!
(thought as long as you study hard you pass. There are no catches, no guessing questions, no ambigious questions. I have to say I find tax interesting, you shuffle numbers&rules around and you save people shed loads of money. Lot of knowledge required, but straight forward!)Hey Anyb, I am totally agree with you, questions were mostly confusing and I neither inderstood the requireent. ACCA is not that type of exams where you have time for guessing, while you do that you loose the marks.
The other point is that in p 5 you don’t have structured answers, even my studding provider doesn’t know how to write the answers and it’s really annoying because I am (as well as you are) not a native speaker and more structured exams such as you mentioned p6 or p7 (although they are different by nature) are very much clear to do.
Well, i am sure i will be sitting it in June… Hope one day we will do it! ))
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