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ACCA Exam Review Board

Our ACCA Exam Review Board goes over the June 2010 sitting with a fine tooth comb

Vicky Taylor & the team
KAPLAN FINANCIAL
F4 was fair, with a couple of challenging areas. Fraud and Criminal Law aspects didn’t appear, disappointing many candidates, and question 10 would have been perhaps the toughest.
Well rehearsed themes were tested in F5, with only the linear programming question giving the candidates cause for concern.
A slightly more challenging F6 exam than previous recent sittings with the questions appearing to be in a different style to previous exams. This will better prepare students for the rigors of P6.
F7 was overall a fair but time pressured paper, especially in question 3.
F8 saw a welcome return to the normal exam style, covering lots of key topics.
F9 was a fair test, with a higher than usual proportion of marks for pure discussion.
The P1 paper was unusually quite heavily focused on the governance and responsibility - appearing in all questions.
As always, P2 was a demanding paper and in particular students will have struggled with Q1b. The balance of syllabus coverage and mix of questions was good, with enough variable levels of difficulty to identify the competent student.
Unusually for P3 there was no strategy evaluation element, but there were enough ‘strategic’ analysis marks available throughout the paper to make up for this.
P4 was a strange mix, containing some tricky parts, whilst there were some extremely easy questions. The testing of ‘swaps’ for the third consecutive paper would have surprised a lot of students.
P5 students may have struggled with a number of the requirements in Section A which examined non-core areas and required them to demonstrate their commercial understanding. Some students may have been surprised by the large number of written marks available in Section B.
The compulsory questions in P6 were longer than ever before, which students may have found daunting.
P7 was fair and focused on the core syllabus areas with a welcome return to more application based scenarios. A moderately well prepared student should have done well, provided they had read all the audit examiner articles.

Iyi Ogiehor
City of London College
Paper F7 (Financial reporting) was fair and covered a wider area of the syllabus. It was not too time-pressured and there were easy marks available to candidates with good examination techniques. Question 1 required preparation of a consolidated statement of financial position with the usual subsidiary and associate. As in previous diets, candidates who prepared thoroughly should score well. The main issues for this question are the treatments of contingent consideration and the intangible asset that was written off by the subsidiary in the post-acquisition period as it was considered valueless by the parent. Question 2 was easier than the last diet. The main issue here was IFRS 5, which complemented the usual suspects. The rest of the paper was fair although a great deal of time was required. All in all, this was a fairer paper.
The P2 paper (Corporate Reporting) was technically demanding and was, as expected focused on current standards. The paper was fair and the well prepared candidate should score very highly.
Question 1 required a consolidated statement of comprehensive income of a simple group structure. The question was by no means simple and required, among other things, treatment of part disposals of subsidiaries where one still remained a subsidiary and the other became an associate. Also required was the calculation and presentation of impairment losses on financial instruments. The part on amendment to the rules on reclassification should boost the marks of those who attempted it. Question 2 dealt with various standards and is representative of the examiner’s style.
Overall, this was a good paper.

Tim Paton
First Intuition
F4 was fair and all core topics tested. The examiner seems to not be splitting each 10 mark question into parts but giving candidates free range on what to write about in response to each requirement which weaker candidates will not have liked.
F5 was well balanced between calculations and discussion and contained expected/core topics. The new examiner, Ann Irons kept the same style as the previous examiner and this made for a very fair paper.
In F6 the question requirements were broken down a little more than previously leading to broader syllabus coverage and no single large full tax computation requirements.
The F7 exam was a good mix of written and numerical requirements together with enough “funnies” to identify the prize winner. The 10 marks on capitalisation of borrowing costs would have thrown a few students but was comfortable for well prepared students.
F8 –Pami Bahl has shown herself to be a fair examiner with a paper set at just the right level to test candidates. Her paper covered a good range of topics and should have allowed well prepared candidates to obtain a pass
In F9 investment appraisal and working capital topics were there although expected value calculations with the cash balances would have been a little unexpected. Students should fare well having reviewed past exams.
P1 was sensible and fair containing some topical issues (top bankers pension and nuclear power). No serious problems for students were noted.
In P2 the group accounting question with disposals would have created a challenge and the question on “hedge accounting was a disappointing question - how many students will come across such a transaction in the real world? A Graham Holt classic.
There were sufficient easy marks for a competent student to survive the P6 exam. Tougher parts included the rules surrounding Senior Accounting officers.
In P7 students can have no complaints at all. Using similar wording to previous papers and covering some core topics, a well prepared candidate should have been able to complete this paper within time.

Paul Rogers
7 city

Paper F8 (Audit & Assurance) was ‘fit for purpose’ as a test of core knowledge with few hidden traps and good syllabus coverage. There was further evidence that the case studies have become more straightforward, and delegates who had followed the time honoured advice of practising questions would have identified many easy marks associated with both risk and ethics. The greatest challenge was associated with identification and assessment of internals controls and the audit testing thereof as this is a subject which exposes both weaknesses in written technique and ability to generate hit rate. This would have been compounded by the association of controls and perpetual inventory counts as the latter may not have been anticipated. However, the multi-part nature of all questions on the paper, plus some marks for knowledge rather than application, should have ensured that everyone who had prepared properly was rewarded.
Paper P7 (Advanced Audit & Assurance) was a paper that rewarded PQs who had good exam technique and who had focussed their preparation on optimising their syllabus wide knowledge and its application instead of ‘second guessing’ potential exam targets. No question had less than four separate mark scoring components, and although questions were based around a theme each requirement was sufficiently ring fenced to enable a poor performance in one section not to torpedo prospects elsewhere. From an academic perspective the paper was well constructed to avoid replicating Paper F8 skills, and provided case study scenarios based on unlisted groups and business advisory work that had a difficulty tariff on a par with recent sittings; hence those who had worked past papers had little to fear.
In section B most will have attempted the ethics question, and then have faced a dilemma as to which other question work. The question focussing on audit reports and negligence had some easy marks, but delegates may have been put off by section (b) and uncertainty between the concepts of an ‘emphasis of matter’ and ‘other matters’.

Tony Mock
LCA
The June 2010 exam for F5 is not one about which any student should have a complaint! The ACCA has attempted to overcome its problems with this paper - caused by the excessive levels of exemptions from earlier papers and the inappropriate format of those earlier papers - by bringing down the standard of the F5 exam. Until the problems of F2 and F3 are overcome (and a review of the structure of the exams is now upon us), this must be described as a suitable test for the students coming through from the knowledge module. The question on linear programming has clearly been designed in such a way as to make the answers to the question suitable for marking scanned copies on screen. One might question whether this makes a suitable test of the topic. It also seems strange to see a business making cricket bats showing its financial results in dollars, but the question itself (on variances) was perfectly fair. If this sitting of F5 has the same poor results that have been seen for much of the current syllabus, then you certainly can't lay the blame at the feet of the outgoing examiner.
P5 seemed fair - covering a number of the topics central to the syllabus. It contained a reasonable mixture of computational marks and marks for discussion that a student could adjust according to the selection made in section B of the paper. Questions are of a similar style and standard to those that we have seen from the current examiner for some years now. It will be a shame to see the end of the tenure of Shane Johnson since any new examiner is quite likely to place a different interpretation on the syllabus, have different priorities and a different style. Students in December should expect a bigger change from what we have been used to in P5 than the small change seen when the current syllabus replaced its predecessor.

Deborah Taylor
BPP
As we have come to expect from the ACCA this was a reasonable set of exams. Yes, there were a couple of papers that were more challenging, but on the whole the student who walked into the exam hall well prepared and applied good technique throughout should pass.
F4 tested a broad range of areas and was a fair test of candidates’ abilities but they are likely to have struggled to generate detailed answers to questions 9 and 10. F5 was in line with expectation but the style and content of some of the F6 exam may have been a surprise. Income tax was not tested, there was a heavier emphasis on corporate tax and ethics was examined in question 4.
We would expect that most candidates found F7 doable, but would expect question 5 to be answered poorly as this was on an area that has not been examined often. F8 provided excellent coverage of the syllabus with no surprises and the F9 paper was more straightforward than December 2009, but we thought the probability calculations in question 1 were a bit brutal.
P2 was one of the toughest papers we have seen in terms of time pressure and technical content, testing complex groups with disposals in question 1 and hedging and derivatives in question 3. P1 and P3 made up for this, however, as we thought these were reasonable papers.
And finally, we thought the options papers were examined at an appropriate level with nothing unexpected being tested.

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