Should ACCA Set a Maximum Number of Resits per Subject

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.

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.

@Robert

Well basic economy rules. Supply rises the price falls.