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

regarding Q1 C what measured gets done.

there are several ways to answer this question, for example,

key performance indicator

balanced scorecard

if you donot believe use google to find out you can type both what measured gets done balanced scorecard

@darthvader001
yes please do write about the absence of MIRR formula on the question paper. really super ambiguous question requirements, lengthy case studies, and the complete absurdity and abnormality of the Q4, benchmarking.
almost all requirements contained 14-15 marks on average i guess….. the marks were not split into shorter requirement and that made the paper very difficult to handle. i think there is no P5 past paper structured in such a manner.

Hi DarthVader..

If you need some help compiling a formal complaint letter please let me know, am happy to help! I think rather than talk about individual questions and talk in detail about the issues with the questions, the focus should be on the wording of the requirements and how none of the questions in the BPP Revision Kit was worded in such manner.

There are websites where we can set up a online petition, where we can put up the link here and on other P5 forums and send out to everyone to fill in their details.

There is no harm in doing this… probably a 1% chance anything will happen but we may get lucky!

🙂

@darthvader001

For those of you who in the UK (or in Glasgow), why not arrange a protest…against Alex Watt….I don’t think a letter would not do any better, they would simply consider it a piece of paper. On the other hand, a protest would at least show them that students are the main stakeholders and does have power to influence the decision of ACCA. Some one here also said that on the physical protest of a Big 4 firm, they re-passed the failed student. A simple group of 100 people and 2 or 3 channels cameraman would suffice. You know how media guys are.

I am in for the petition or what ever type of action to express my correct complain against p5 exam of this June.By the way some of the suggestions here need to be put in a careful way,that saying Alex Watt should do no use to us who sat p5 in June instead we must make clear that 1.the markings must take the situation into consideration so that there will be some change in the passing marks point
2.for all those who will take p5 in the future ACCA need to control the examiners and the examination questions set for a particular exam session and hence chnging examiners won’t help(firing ALex) as the new comer may be the same so either ACCA must watch and review the examiners(which I believe it would do) or
if not doeble ,perhaps due to agreements,changing would be an option.so what we need now is our p5 papers be marked in a fair way due to failure of the examiner to set the questions right.

hence the group must take this into consideration when protesting or writing to ACCA or taking any feasible action ….

People here saying that ACCA passing rate being low will do them more bad than good, have to consider that a lower passing rate in their examination means a tougher qualification to achieve and hence its increase in value in the market.

Lets face it, an employer given the option of hiring a person who has passed a qualification with an average 30% pass rate as compared to a qualification having 65% pass rate is obviously going to hire the 30% pass rate candidate.

The difficulty in achieving a qualification only adds to its value.

And those saying that having a low pass rate means ACCA is having students with low intellectual capabilities must keep in mind that getting to the professional stage itself requires heck of a lot of capabilities, if you cannot get to the professional stage ur not fit enough to become an ACCA, and if you get to this stage you certainly have the ability.

I agree even my paper was pathetic and im almost certainly failing, but i have myself partly to blame for not practising by timing questions. And perhaps ill go for P6 in the next exam, judging by my habit of not being able to complete any paper on time.

@gudluck said:

Lets face it, an employer given the option of hiring a person who has passed a qualification with an average 30% pass rate as compared to a qualification having 65% pass rate is obviously going to hire the 30% pass rate candidate.

The difficulty in achieving a qualification only adds to its value.

The reality is….

3 people are interviewees

– One is qualified ICAEW
– The other is part qualified ACCA, and has failed his/her last exam 2/3 times
– The third is ACCA qualified

The employer would, as I would, employee the first or 3rd person, not caring much about which qualification, just that they have one.

Employers dont know, and dont care, they just want someone who is qualified

It was a crazy paper! Time was too little. Most questions were more than ten marks. Q5 was way too much read to even consider after Q1. It was an insane paper.
Having said that, if you had read the articals in the student account then you would have known Q1c, the question about bench marking and the question about the performance prism. I still had no time to even get nearly everything written down. I completely messed up Q1b. 14 marks gone!!

In my opinion the issues with Q1a was that the report contained too much detail info. It was info overload! There were also no external info, or forward looking info or non financial info. Those are the characteristics of Strategic management accounting. The report was afterall used for strategic purposes.
I dont know what else…

Q1c was that people only concentrate on things that get measured. this was also in one of his articles. Basically they are saying that if there are no performance indicators in place to measure the results, then staff don’t bother doing it well. I think in the scenario they used they said the woman told the staff to smile at customers. They then said that she doesn’t think they are doing it. She also asked them to switch of the lights or smething to preserve electricity. This they are doing. So basically you can measure electricity usage by the bill. But its hard to measure if staff are smiling at customers. So “what gets measured gets done”.

As far as the benchmarking… it was tough and time was little… I am not sure what they ment by the status of the bench marking process or whatever… i think (but don’t know!) you had to write down what has been done and what still had to be done… so they have selected what type of benchmarking they want to do… they have selected who to bench mark against… what to benchmark etc… i guess they still have to do the actual comparing and then learn from the results and then somehow still implement what they have learned and perhaps also find a way to measure if it is actually working… dunno.
Six sigma, i read briefly in preperation for the paper and I rambled a whole lot of stuff. That was thumb sucking so not sure if I actually got any marks… it was a tough paper forsure!
Time was tooooo little!

ahh p5 🙁 i forgot the mirr calculation i looked at it two days back and in exam i was blank
the examiner should have done little mercy requirements should have been more easy to interpret all time i was thinking if what i am writing is right or not especially qs 1 part a and c and qs 4 part a n qs 5 was out of my reach GOD knows what was it.

smidsy said 4 days, 13 hours ago:
Maybe P4/P6P7 is more achieveable – seems to be what others are doing.

Excuse me, but P4 was the most disasterous paper I’ve ever sat for in ACCA. P5 i found was somewhat manageable. After sitting for a paper like P4, any paper is do’able.

I agree with d4gm, the case study has just too much information, time wasnt enuf to read and answer the requirements.. Spend so much time on the first as Q1 had 40 marks altogether.

The question on benchmarking was tricky and confusing, could differentiate what was asked in part a and b, i could not attempt part b though… 🙁

I also opted for Question 5, again the case study was equivalent to Q1 – so much info and complex.. only one question and it comprised of 17marks.

Hi,
I have just seen F5 has an analysis of the paper by Opentuition due to the comments left on that papers forum, may we have the same thing for P5?
Thanks