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ATC's ACCA Exam Tips (June 2010) F5

The pass rates for F5 have traditionally been very poor. This seems to be due to the big gap between F2 and F5 (or perhaps also because many exempt students do not even take F2).

At paper F2, students can pass if they know the techniques and can apply them to calculation questions. At F5, this is not enough. Not only do students have to be able to do calculations- they also have to be able to critically evaluate management accounting procedures and their impact on business performance, as well as critically evaluate the performance of organisations. It is the last two areas that seem to cause most problems to candidates.

June 2010 will be the last exam that was set by Geoff Cordwell. Geoff has a reputation for being a tough examiner, but if you know what he expects, you should find that he is fair. So make sure you read the examiner’s reports from the last four exams to identify where students went wrong in these. The new examiner Ann Irons has reviewed the June exam, and will also be responsible for the marking process as she was in December 2009.

The ACCA have been proactive in helping to improve performance in this paper, and several articles have bee written, which are available on the ACCA web site. Students should read all of these.

Exam Tips

The only way to ensure that you are prepared for the exam is to cover all parts of the syllabus. The examiner has stated that he will try to frustrate question spotters- so relying on tips to get through exams is a risky strategy- definitely not to be used by maximin or minimax regret decision makers. However, I always try to guess what will come up in the next exam. I usually get about 50% correct.
• Performance evaluation- it is almost certain that there will a question requiring some aspect of performance evaluation, as there always is. Perhaps this time it will involve divisional performance evaluation and may include transfer pricing.
• Backflush accounting- this has not been examined so far under F5. Now could be the time.
• Linear programming
• Activity Based Costing- another possible topic from the management accounting techniques part of the paper.
• Budgeting- behavioural aspects of budgeting.

By Nick Ryan

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