*** P5 June 2012 Exam was … Comments and Instant Poll ***

C U Next Tuesday, Alex Watt!

I totally agree with previous comments that Alex Watt has to go. Where do I sign the petition? Seriously! He is not doing the ACCA’s reputation any favours at all. In fact I would say that he is damaging the reputation of the Association. The ACCA itself should seriously think about replacing him with P5 pass rates of 29%. Thats 71% of P5 students failing!! That is a very, very poor number, yet ACCA seems to think that it is not a problem. Well such low pass rates are a problem. It implies that ACCA students and specifically P5 students are pretty dumb and does not reflect well with potential employers with such low pass marks. An organisation with such a low pass rate indicates it is not very good at weeding out those students that do not have the intellectual level to take these exams. In reality we all know that we are not idiots and are a pretty intelligent bunch but Alex Watt makes us appear dumb.

Watt’s inability to ask a simple question in any P5 exam in plain English language is amazing. His questions are so ambiguous, yet he has the audacity to publicly state that ACCA students are effectively idiots that cannot read his questions properly, which justifies such low pass rates. Screw him..

I have taken this paper several times now under Mr Watt, and each time I was very confident of getting through because of the good level of knowledge of the P5 syllabus. BUT today was yet another example of this idiot, setting impossible questions to answer in just 3 hours. Whatever anyone else claims on this Forum, the questions today are not anything like the real world. Since when has an accountant in the real world got to produce so much accurate, detailed informative work in such a short space of time? Each question took ages to read before we even got to his stupid, ambiguous requirements.

I will not bother retaking this exam again – at least not until Watt is sacked. I needed just one paper to go and it looks like it is going to be P6 in December.

Alex Watt must go!

@cimafan said:
gudluck said 23 minutes ago:
guys give your feedback here. It could be the difference between a pass and a fail!
https://www.webropolsurveys.com/Answer/SurveyParticipation.aspx?SDID=Uni515698&SID=00d3f9c8-4b63-4208-a56

You are wasting your time providing any feedback to the ACCA in my opinion. I have done so for several years now, and several times complaining about Alex Watt, as his exams are quite simply very unfair, but nothing ever changed – he is still here. I have never come across another examiner like him – he has never written any technical articles for ACCA students, only one article that was patronising to us, as I mentioned in another post before.

Do you really think the ACCA could care a damn about our feedback? The more students that fail, the more money they make. We are in tough times and the more students that fail, the better for the ACCA revenue stream.

Hopefully, they do something. Because if I fail this one, then the signs look ominous and im not going for another failure in december. Will go for P6.

hi,

eventually we are here to talk about this p5 and p5 examiner again, last time i failed this exam, that is DEC 2011, i still remembered that it was very horrible experience really. this time, i prepared the worst things to happened, but it looks a little bit better, but it doubts.

we ,as students, have little power, time is wasted to remove the examier, since nobody can listen to us. Alex Watt has a physics background, so his exam style is strongly out of favour with our accounting students.

ALSO,ACCA will control the pass rate, they will alllow certain amount of students to pass, say 30%. so i must say this time of p5 is not easy, still a lot of work to do. his exam requirements are not clear from our point od view.

Alex watt needs to go!!!

I believe every candidate believes in being examined in a fair way that must test the skill,professional ability,knowledge under a time pressure etc.
However coming to the p5 exam the following facts prevail…
-it is understood that candidates must be tested with real life related facts and scenarios .in the real life you will have a time to identify and understand the problem,time to think ,time to propose and come with solutions but in an exam where we are required and given time only to write the answers such type of questions are far to hard than we could imagine.To proof this we can prepare questions of the same nature but from different syllabus area of p5 and make our examiner (with due respect )to sit for exam of 1.30 hours only then see the out come
2.it is believed that in real life and exams too the question/problem of the companies could be very difficult but ultimately the requirements will be understandabl(at least we will have time to do that does that make sense? well I believe so,in p5 what exactly are the requirements this understandably take time to figure out but remember there is only writing time(take in my case q1(I did not calculate npv and mirr there is no data for that only actual date of three years,is not NPV for project appraisal in the future?, question on six sigma and DMAIC what the difference between the two requirements? again question no.4 bench marking most agree that the requirement is not clear so is that how Mr.Alex want us to see the real future?
4.as in my case I read about performance prism well but do you to time pressure in q1,could not relate to the scenario in much detail here do not forget the time is only for writing so how are we jugged here (could Alex say candidates are not prepared well?)

finally in real life we will have very difficult problems even worse than these but with appropriate requirements ,more enough time, even time to refer ,discuss and bla bla so Mr Alex do not think and go that far

Last time i got 45 for P5 & that was the first i ever failed. This time i read the technical articles & covered the syllabus. But the paper is so confusing.I felt that 3 hours is just not enough, so i panicked & didn’t even write what i know. Next time i guess i should try P6/P7. I’m just fed up with this.

@cimafan said:
C U Next Tuesday, Alex Watt!

I totally agree with previous comments that Alex Watt has to go. Where do I sign the petition? Seriously! He is not doing the ACCA’s reputation any favours at all. In fact I would say that he is damaging the reputation of the Association. The ACCA itself should seriously think about replacing him with P5 pass rates of 29%. Thats 71% of P5 students failing!! That is a very, very poor number, yet ACCA seems to think that it is not a problem. Well such low pass rates are a problem. It implies that ACCA students and specifically P5 students are pretty dumb and does not reflect well with potential employers with such low pass marks. An organisation with such a low pass rate indicates it is not very good at weeding out those students that do not have the intellectual level to take these exams. In reality we all know that we are not idiots and are a pretty intelligent bunch but Alex Watt makes us appear dumb.

Watt’s inability to ask a simple question in any P5 exam in plain English language is amazing. His questions are so ambiguous, yet he has the audacity to publicly state that ACCA students are effectively idiots that cannot read his questions properly, which justifies such low pass rates. Screw him..

I have taken this paper several times now under Mr Watt, and each time I was very confident of getting through because of the good level of knowledge of the P5 syllabus. BUT today was yet another example of this idiot, setting impossible questions to answer in just 3 hours. Whatever anyone else claims on this Forum, the questions today are not anything like the real world. Since when has an accountant in the real world got to produce so much accurate, detailed informative work in such a short space of time? Each question took ages to read before we even got to his stupid, ambiguous requirements.

I will not bother retaking this exam again – at least not until Watt is sacked. I needed just one paper to go and it looks like it is going to be P6 in December.

Alex Watt must go!

What do you mean by CU Next Tuesday??? Please fill us in on it. Tnx

@smidsy said:
Hey, maybe this is another person but there is an Alex Watt here

https://www.linkedin.com/pub/alex-watt/b/5a9/469

If its the same bloke, he left ACCA ??

Huh ?

Where does it say on that link that he left ACCA?

it says he has been working for acca from 2009-2011. But if thats to be believed then why was his article published in feb 2012.

Hoping he gives marks for application regardless of whether uve done it wrong or right LOL. I don’t even remember half of the things i wrote in the last hour.

This was my second sitting for p5, i have never failed in any other papers… Juggling between work, kids, home and studies..i sacrificed a lot and really worked hard, just to sit a paper where no question clearly makes sense….p5 is really me letting me down..i am this close to finishing ACCA……Hope someone is taking note of the trauma we students are going through by an examiner who is hell bent on putting us down!

You losers are pathetic. I actually feel sorry for you. At least wait until the results before you start crying like little children. I can’t believe I’m reading grown adults calling for the examiner to be hanged, calling him a c***, wanting him fired, getting all internet detective to find his linkedin profile – are you serious?!!!
Whichever sad sack called for his hanging – what if your employer read that?! You’ve evidently learned NOTHING about professional behaviour, despite it being hammered home repeatedly throughout your exams.
Yes it was a hard paper but not impossible – why are you surprised that you’re expected to APPLY your knowledge in an unfamiliar scenario, especially when there was a technical article released SPECIFICALLY to remind you of this OBVIOUS point?
I found this a hard paper too – but grow the hell up, if it’s not difficult it’s not worth doing.

HI, studoiucluediou. please do not be a showoff.It is not about the difficulty of the paper. what was difficult, can you tell me. performance prism, benchmarking, six sigma, DMAIC or MBO.?
The problems is that the requirements were not clear. Why would one examiner play around with the question requirements, he could simply mentioned, calculate NPV’ MIRR and EVA, but he mentioned, do what the accountant did. Then in Q3, part(a) and part (b) had the same requirements.

I personally did every single part of all 4 questions and i will pass this paper. However, if the requirements were not so confusing, i could had proper and better time management. I could secure 70% or even above. Understanding of the questions requirements took most of the time.
Regarding English, we are not doing masters in english literature. I have problems in this part, but I passed P7 in dec 2011 with 73 marks. I can share my result with you if you want.