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Top mark for ICAEW

ICAEW’s new education chief Mark Protherough spoke to PQ magazine about the challenges that lie ahead and his goals for the future

Meet Mark Protherough, the ICAEW’s new executive director, learning and professional development. For a body looking to build on its successes at home and abroad, he is the man for the job.
Protherough has been at the ICAEW for five years now, and for seven months before getting the top job was acting education chief while the ICAEW decided whether it was going to replace former education chief Raymond Madden.
Before joining the ICAEW, Protherough had a distinguished career at the ACCA as its director of education. It is now his job to ensure the institute keeps growing its student base and expanding the qualification’s reach abroad. One area earmarked for special care, however, is closer to home: small practices in the UK.
The ACA qualification is also due a full-scale review. The AAT has just unveiled its new syllabus and CIPFA is looking seriously at its offering. Protherough, too, is excited about the prospect of starting with a blank piece of paper. The real challenge for anyone in this job is to balance the needs of both PwC and the smaller practices. The number of students in Malaysia, Singapore and the Middle East is also growing rapidly, so any changes will have to meet all these different stakeholders’ needs without looking like a compromise. No easy task, then. Protherough feels the big challenge for him as an educator, in all this, is developing ACAs who can think critically.
The ICAEW has been ahead of the game when it comes to its approach to professional exams. There are, for example, already four sittings of the professional stage each year. The institute also had multiple-choice exams years before they became fashionable with the other bodies. All ICAEW exams are sat by a technical moderator and a newly qualified, who sit the exam blind. The examiner then marks their papers to see if the questions are too long and need a rejig. Protherough was surprised about the willingness of some NQs to put themselves through this torture again. “They want to give something back and this is a real benefit to those coming through behind them,” he says.
He was pleased to see that the accountancy firms are feeling more positive about 2010 (see our KPMG story on page 10), but recognised that 2009 had been a tough year for many firms and students alike.
Protherough also wanted to stress that the accountancy bodies come under real scrutiny from the Professional Oversight Board. The ICAEW is formally monitored and audited as a ‘recognised supervisory body’ and a ‘recognised qualifying body’. A POB team recently spent a week auditing the whole ICAEW exam processes: from the setting of exams, the checking of examiners’ CVs, to the marking process and mark distribution.
There was one final question we had to ask him: what he was going to treat himself to now he is the top man? Protherough is a big family man and Birmingham City FC supporter. He also plays a bit of golf, and admitted he has bought himself a set of Calloway irons. In true style they were 10 years old and cost £120. And no, he hasn’t had time for a round yet!

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