General ACCAShould ACCA Set a Maximum Number of Resits per Subject

What follows is only my personal opinion - not 'official' OpenTuition policy :-) I do think that allowing unlimited resits is wrong. However, the fact that the ACCA set an overall limit of 10 years surely does stop that. (Although I must admit that the fact that they seem to start the 10 years again every time they have a full syllabus review does make a bit of a mockery of that! ) I do hope others will give their opinion on this.

Do you think that someone who passes at 50% first time is better than someone who after 3 attempts finally passes at say 60%? Who do you think understand the concepts better? There are people who are lucky enough to scrap a pass first time but this does not mean that they fully understood the syllabus or even reach an acceptable standard. The 10 year limit is there for a reason and soon there will be another time limit. So I honestly think that allowing unlimited resit opportunities, does not lower the overall standard of the qualification.

Thanks Dante I was not thinking about 3 attempts I was thinking of the more extreme end of things, 4, 5, 6 resit attempts upwards. Unfortunately its an exam based system so performance in exams is important, and whether you agree or not some employers (not all) still insist on 1st time passes for candidates. Whats your view on institutes that do limit resit attempts (ICAS, ICAEW etc) they limit to 3 attempts?

I think ACCA should limit the number of attempts per paper say to a maximum of three. Allowing unlimited resists lowers the overal quality of the qualification. Like someone pointed out, anyone can pass any paper if they keep on attempting it over and over again.

The same as John's comment above, this is my personal opinion and is in no way to be representative of opentuition "official" policy (We don't have one on this matter so far as I am aware!) Many years ago in Manchester I taught a student who was on the edge of a metaphorical cliff. In those days it was a requirement to pass the last 5 exams in one sitting (note this, those of you who wonder whether two exams on consecutive days is too much. In those days it was 5 exams on consecutive half days - 2 on Tuesday, 2 on Wednesday and the last on Thursday morning!). If you had one marginal fail, you were allowed to resit that paper twice. If you still hadn't passed, you had to do all 5 papers again This particular student failed auditing, did two resits and failed the paper twice more. Did all five again and failed auditing. Did two resits and failed the paper twice more. Never failed an exam in his life and now failed auditing 6 times. When he came on my course (the first time he had attended my course though he had been on others) it was his last attempt - he would be timed-out if he failed He took all five for the third time and ......passed. He's now a partner in a firm North of Manchester and (last I heard) was doing well and was well respected by his partners and the firm's clients. The fact that this individual found that one particular paper (nearly) impossible to pass fortunately did not prevent him from being a competent partner in a firm of chartered accountants. The world of accountancy would have lost out if he had failed in that last attempt and would have been a poorer place because of it. Surely the student who fails is a reflection of the ACCA's standards being consistently applied. But failure in the past should not prevent success in the future. On the contrary, the abilities of a student must be increased to a level which is then "acceptable" and success is achieved. One more anecdote - again many years ago, I taught a student for the final financial accounting paper. I had previously taught him for many papers before - seven of the previous ten. When I met him on the final accounting paper, he told me that he had still never failed an exam and, for his first 10 papers, he had an aggregate score of 507. That's 6 x 50, 3 x 51 and 1 x 54 - and he was upset with the 54 because he saw it as a waste of effort. Now, which of those two former students is the better accountant? Success in these exams is hard earned and whether you pass at the first attempt or only after a number of resits, the fact that you have passed is an indication of your abilities John says that he agrees with the idea of a time limit (admittedly it's a bit of a mockery). I'm not sure what a stricter time limit would achieve other than a number of disappointed, disillusioned "failed" accountants who are probably totally competent in their work but who lack the ability to pass an exam. In summary, yes, keep the ten year time limit .... but keep it as a mockery ie change the syllabus and start the ten years all over again

I strongly support this : Since this thread has already mentioned more or less all the points I could have said on time limit and number of attempts. So I though, I’ll take a bit different approach in this discussion, since this is an important issue. Although ACCA try to promote itself as a global, when the real fact is that, most of the first world countries (where they have strong accounting bodies) do not mutually recognise ACCA in the same way as they recognise ICAEW/ICAS. And these countries recognise ACCA; they also recognise others. In another word, ICAEW/ICAS is more reputed in terms of mutual recognition. (Sorry, I am not putting forward the idea that, ICAEW/ICAS is better than ACCA) Although quality, contents and status of these qualifications are more or less same in UK, but to me, for the following reasons ACCA is not as highly regarded as ICAEW/ICAS in UK/Worldwide. *10 years of time limit and unlimited attempts of a paper within that 10 years timeframe (I just wonder, how apprehensive ACCA has to be in its intakes (students) to introduce such ridiculous policy) *adjusted pass rate (I am not sure, if it is true) *No formal barrier to entry (such as getting into a sponsor company first).So absolutely any student can get entry into ACCA with minimum qualification. *non mandatory work experience while completing exams *High number of exemptions (I got 7 exemptions, but could apply for all available 9, where I could get a maximum of 3 exemptions in ICAEW) .This is one of the main reason for me to take ACCA.I am not in practice and my employer (service industry) doesn’t bother which qualification I do, as long as I don’t fail any subject, so that they don’t have to pay tuition fee/days off again for same subjects. If anyone thinks that, above points are in the favour of students, than please think twice. My View Although personally I believe that, there should be no barrier on education, but reputation of an Institute such as ACCA must be sustain through quality of their policy. I think that, ACCA is well aware of the disadvantages of the above points for student, but for commercial reason, they deliberately introduced these. To me, ACCA opened the flood gate for skimming from these floods, in the form of exam fees and subscriptions, and to have presence in more countries (quantity over quality). From my observation what I’ve seen in generally that, if a student fails second time in a subject, than the probability is quite high that, that respective student is likely to fail other subjects as well and more than once. And I think that, ACCA loves to keep these students in its register as long term cash cow. So, definitely I agree that, ACCA must think about this 10 years time limit for passing all subjects and number of attempts on a single subject. And also an independent body to verify these pass rates with actual marks student obtained in a paper.

Hi Mike thanks for responding. It sounds at the time you mention that the bar was set way higher than now. In reality with the mockery that is the 10 year rule and the constant reset of the clock that you can and do have students who resit and fail papers many times, ive seen students on this forum having failed papers 5 and 6 times. Granted these are probably a minority, but that doesnt show a robust standatd being applied. Lets apply this to a different profession would you allow a doctor to operate on your loved ones if you knew they had failed an exam or practical multiple times? I certainly wouldn't and would question the standard of tge governing body who allowed the persin to qualify. Lets be honest that wouldn't be allowed to happen in that profession. It may seem harsh but to allow candidates unlimited resits does lower the value of the award, its supposed to be a professional post grad level award. The disappointed and disillusioned that you mentioned who would be victims of a tightening are simply those who couldnt make the grade, we should not sacrifice or dillute the quality of the people who qualify just to accomodate students who cannot meet a stricter standard. Harsh maybe!!. An alternate would be for acca to offer an alternate assessment method so that student who generally struggle with exam formats could be accomodated ( with limits on attempts of course)

Interesting conversation here! Mike that guy had a determination that is rare amongst us and its like he had a 'vision'. My questions would be does passing an exam in the first sitting make you a better accountant than someone who has taken the paper 3 times? Would you compare a jobless fresh graduate who spends 24hrs a day reading with a finance manager of a corporate with a family and other responsibilities trying to sit the same paper? I think the ACCA's unlimited number of resists takes into account the diverse circumstances and environment students find themselves in because we are not in a boarding school where we are faced with same exam preparations scenarios. And to your surprise you might pass a paper in the first sitting and when given the same paper a minute later you will fail disastrously. Qualification units should aim at equipping the students with the job market skills that is desperately needed. As far as I can remember no interview panel has asked me how many times i did a paper what matters to most of them is are you a finalist or not. The challenge is upon ACCA to make its qualification more relevant then it will have the prestigiousness it so aspires for. Or else the fate that befell the MBA will soon hit it and it might never recover.

I just compared the annual report of 2012 of both ACCA and ICAEW to confirm my suspicion as in my previous post. And guess what, my suspicion were true. If anyone has still has doubt why ACCA will not put any limit on the number of attempts per subjects or time limit to complete the whole qualifications or most importantly, put some criteria to limit the student intake (to better quality, if I can say so); please just compare the student numbers and the percentage of the revenue generation from these numbers. It seems that, ACCA is purely relying on quantity and they will keep this so called mockery on, if not take this mockery to a extreme level for more cash cow, like putting 7 years time limit on passing “P” level exams (as I read from other threads/blogs).That will be a final nail on coffin and whole ACCA qualification will be a mockery itself, I am afraid. Anyway, my point here is that, not putting the limit on the number of attempts per subject or 10 years time limit to complete the whole qualification (and can be press the refresh button after 10 years and can be done all over again.....what a joke) is not bless towards students, but to ACCA . I also think that, this policy is making a student lazy and not to take exams seriously (there are plenty points to support this arguments, but at this point, I just want to stick with this thread topic only). A simple fact that, although an employer looks for various skills in candidates, but certainly that employer will prefer to recruit someone who passed first time than who failed few times, if everything else same.

absolutely. 3 or 4 should be the maximum. you could train a monkey to pass a paper if they had unlimited chances. really devalues the qualification when i see people saying they are on their 8th attempt. im like jeeez if this person ever passes they are going to have the same qualification as me but not be of the same standard, in my opinion.

if i failed any subject more than 1 time i would have lost heart and given up. why not admire the brute determination of a person who keeps failing but keeps trying.you need people like that in any group be it acca or your local club.i am not making light of the situation but saying dogged determination is something that will never lower standard for anything

because would you want a doctor that had taken 9 years to finish their medicine degree because they kept failing over and over again? no you wouldnt.

resitting numerous times doesnt show determination, it shows a failure to grasp only 50% of the (relatively) basic content and skills required to pass the exams. if someone finds it so hard to understand and apply the key accounting knowledge and skills then maybe they are not cut out to be an accountant? when someone says they are taking a paper for the 8th time, i dont go WOW YOURE SO DETERMINED, I HAVE SO MUCH RESPECT FOR YOU. i say wow, maybe it isnt for you, maybe you arent suited to it. i think it shows much more determination to pass every exam first time. failure isn't an option. i was determined to pass, and i did.

Okay, let's say if ACCA sets a limit of 3 sittings for exam. And someone who's giving his/her Professional level paper and failed 3 times... then what? Dropped from ACCA's register?

Yes thats exactly what would happen. Its an equivelent post grad professional qualification. ita also what some of the other institutes do (ICAS ICAEW)

With respect, the Doctor analogy is not a fair one. I work 9-5, Monday-Friday, and spend my spare time studying for the ACCA exams. Pretty certain no practicing Doctor, past or present, would have become qualified this way.

I think you will find thats exactly how they train and qualify. They train on the job and undertake exams during the period as well to fully qualify, they definitely dont get unlimited resits and yes people get rejected \ ejected and never fully qualify.

I'm not training on the job, though. Therefore my situation and (i'd guess) many thousands of others is not the same as the one you have described.

Setting max 3 number of resits would cause that not many student would even think about doing Acca. It would be too risky to start. Imagine someone who pass all F papers at first time, and then fail last P level paper 3 times (maybe just couldn't cope with stress, pressure to complete) Time limit is also not sensible in my opinion, as there is always reason behind delay. There are students who have plenty of time to study, don't work or work a couple of hours per week, healthy, with no family commitments. There may be also students that for certain period had to suspend studying or doing only few hours per week due to variety of reasons: full time work (tiredness), serious illness, small children, sth else happened. Besides I think If someone want to finish this qualification and become professional he will be sooner or later, if not enough determined-will give up anyway...

A good question. I agree that there should be a limited number of resits. However, I do think that ACCA should provide the student with copies of their paper in order to see why they failed. I just took F8 and though I passed, after looking at the perfect answers I expected a much higher mark. If you had a marginal fail, you should be able to look at your paper see where you have failed and if you disagree have the right to appeal.

doctors definitely do study and work at the same time. that's really not relevant, the analogy was to demonstrate the quality of the professional is important, and it matters to the client. and the ability to pass exams is an excellent indicator of the quality of the professional. i work on average 50 hours per week, so the fact that you work full time is not a reason why it is not possible to pass within 3 attempts. this is all moot, in my opinion, because ACCA must make a lot of their money from these people resitting over and over again so probably realistically couldn't actually afford to change the current setup to one where they make less money. also it is unlikely that someone would pass eveyr F paper first time but then not be able to pass P papers within 3 attempts. maybe the ideal would be to have a maximum of 10 resits available across all papers or something, so that if someone struggles with only one paper, it doesnt mean they are dropped, and if someone has to resit every paper 3 or 4 times then they are dropped because it is clear they are not cut out for studying the ACCA. i also agree that it would be useful for people that failed to see their marked scripts but maybe not logistically possible for ACCA. more expense on their side i suppose.

Someones post early on this thread said that a person who fails multple times will not be a good accountant. But what if they dont want to be - they maybe want to specialise in tax so they fly through P6 and then what? P4? P5? P7? How is any one of those going to make them a bettertax consultant or adviser?Lets face it - somepeople are good at taking exams and others arent. One of the problems is that sometimes you can know too much - see a question and staert answering it and before you know it, your two hours into the exam with only 20% answered. Is the really bright student who has written books on strategy and leads presentations for the local acca society any worse as a professional because she keeps failing P7? She has a full life with partner and children, full time employment, extra presentations to do for the firms inhouse training courses. Shes the mentor for the new intake and presents the firm on the annual visits round the universities but she cant pass P7 Just because a person has to take an exam multiple times does not make them any worse an accountant than the first time passers. It might be an interesting exercise if we all found out whether all the partners in our firms past all there exams first time. I can happily believe that 50%+ of them didnt

This is definately an interesting debate. I dont feel that there should be a limit. As someone who has passed all my exams so far first time with the major exception of F8 (passed on my 8th go!) i would now not be able to continue. I personally think that if like me people are struggling with just 1 paper they will keep at it till they pass or give up (lets face it theres alot of people that after 7 attempts would have gone running for the hill) This in itself will weed out the people that are not meant to continue on the ACCA. There are also reasons why people may fail (2 of my F8 papers were done when i had glandular fever and the other the day after being made redundant) These may not be taken into consideration when asking for a resit (certainly didnt help me when i wrote about my circumstances and still failed both attempts by 2 marks) All in all, if people want to continue and pay out the money (as most companies wont pay for resits) then i say good on them for having the determination and faith in themselves to do it.

Here is my two pennies for ACCA syllabus: ACCA should introduce integrated module case study in its final stage, all the other premium accountancy qualifications (The other 5 UK & Ireland chartered accountancy bodies, most of the GAA bodies, heck, even Australia CPA) got the final case study/simulation/capstone project to integrate all the subjects into one to test students’ application and understanding of the knowledge they learn from the course. As for final optional professional papers, ACCA set a too free policy: students can pick any two of four studies. But in accountancy world, the role of accountants are mostly split into the following functions: financial accounting, treasury, management accounting, public practice & auditing. So ACCA should follow the functions and design a set of disciplines for tracks of students: Financial accounting & treasury, must pass P4 & P6 Management accounting, must pass P4 & P5 Public practice & auditing, must pass P6 & P7 Then based on these three different tracks, ACCA can introduce the different final case study papers to integrate. P1 corporate governance & risks & ethics should be split and only applied to the individual modules, because these knowledge should be considered from the perspective of each business scenario, and the modular testing works better. Students will be well aware of the knowledge in the context of each situation. Like how ICAEW integrates the ethics into each of the modules. So add a final case study, offset by removing P1, the total papers are still 14. Then ACCA should introduce a comprehensive technical module regarding information system, data manipulation, statistics etc, by using Excel, or better R language (which is a professional tool of modeling & computation for data specialists). This module should be better situated between the fundamental and professional modules. Why introducing this module? Because nowadays business information are mostly obtained from big data. We come across budget forecasting, decision making trees, simulation, sampling in F5, F8, F9. These all concern probabilities subject, but in the text books, ACCA only provide the probability, not how the probability is obtained. That is very weird, and unrealistic. Accountants do not have the luxury of having the probability at hand, most of the time, these are calculated. If ACCA does not teach its students this, how come its accountants be prepared for this new era where data and knew how to process data is everything. This will make its members inadequate in the modern business world. To achieve the new technical modules (I call it F10), ACCA can consider the possibility of introducing hotshot MOOC for its studies. MOOC platforms like Coursera, Udacity, EdX got very handy tools to assess and teach students. For chartered accountants around the world and most of the GAA members, it is mandatory for them to enroll in the college. Currently, ACCA does not require this. But I think ACCA should seriously consider this, because the student yield rate is way too low compared with other chartered accountancy bodies, considering the difficult level should be on par. For those chartered accountancy students, by enrolling in the college, they got more disciplined in their study. Let’s face it, it is only human nature that people are lazy and tend to avoid hard work. The self-study policy now ACCA employs probably is one of the reason why the yield rate is so low. So ACCA should outsource the teach to one of the MOOC platforms or contract them to help ACCA build a similar MOOC platform. ACCA employs tutors in the MOOC, while the 400,000 Students offer small tuition (most of MOOC tuition is small based on the nature of massive online learning) to enroll the class of individual modules. The assessment can be done by cross-evaluation among students. ACCA can require students must pass the assessment/objective quizzes of each class in the MOOC platform before they can sit for the respective papers. Marks in MOOC only work as a precondition for exam sittings because of the nature of MOOC, students might be cheating in the class, so marks obtained from MOOC are not for ACCA evalution, but only for exam sitting precondition. Of course, the new modules and introduction of MOOC requires financing, but considering this, most of the ACCA students are cash cow right now anyway, just by looking at the annual published FRC reports, ACCA got the highest revenue and profits among the 6 UK chartered accountancy bodies. It wouldn’t be that difficult for ACCA to invest into the new modules from those earned profits. Besides, new modules & tutors are financed by student tuition anyway if MOOC is introduced. So, now we have the 15 papers to qualify with ACCA, making it on par with ICAEW/CIMA. Those obnoxious ACAs won’t have the excuse to say that ACCAs lack the ability to integrate the learned knowledge and apply them in the real business world.

Very nice debate going on here... Indeed the standard of ACCA qualification would be higher by restricting the number of resit.. Students would be more serious about exams if they know that there is a limit on their resitting time...

Can I ask the person who had started the thread even doe that was almost 2 years ago, which paper you were taking at that time of your post? The problem we have is, people who are in their last papers want changes to ACCA because it will not affect them as they have already gone through them. Consider yourself at point zero and you were just about to start ACCA, someone said alright, you fail 3 times your off, trust me people won't even sign up. Why we even complaining about people who pass 3rd or the 10th time. Let them get on with their lives and you get on with your life. You should be grateful you passed first time. End of the day all that matters is the pass, that's it. By the way I have only Failed 1 ACCA paper ever and that was P1 in June 2015. So I know what I'm talking about. Just my opinion.

I don't really have an opinion on the number of resists allowed. My issues are value for money given the amount of money Acca get and the service we receive and the inception of multiple choice questions in exams. I really feel the qualification is being dumbed down. It's only a matter of time before all exams become multiple choice, then the qualification I'm working hard towards will be worthless

@Robert Well basic economy rules. Supply rises the price falls.

Why limit the resits? A first time pass or a 5th time pass is still a pass. Either you meet the standard or you don't. Passing a 5th resit doesn't mean the exam is easier, but that the student has had time to go away and get better until it was a high enough standard. Determination and never giving up is a golden quality in anyone. I failed f5, learned my lesson, went away and took f5 and f9 in Dec 15. I have a full time job and a new 10 month old baby. I cannot dedicate every free hour to acca study. But I do my absolute best and myself and family make sacrifices around study time. I will never give up for me or for them as this acca qual betters our future . And anyone that thinks a few resits degrades the qualification.......how? I COULD NOT complete this if I had to do 5 in one sitting as a a family man. The flexibility of acca is being compared to a poorer quality qualification here. Rubbish. Just because I didn't go with ICA or ACA and get rode by an audit firm for 3.5 years for what they will tell me is he better qualification. ....cause they supply cheap labour to the firm's via trainee contracts. It is set up to be inflexible for he sake of the firks. Plus hube exam leave.. My employer gave me the day of the exam as half day. I was back in work at 3pm. Some opinions on here seem to be from spoon fed perfectionists who think a first pass is the golden dish. Makes you wonder HOW hey may deal with failure in the future, if this is their attitude now. An attitude that will hold anyone back in life in my opinion.