Study Zone

One qualification to rule them all

The AAT has finally unveiled its revised accountancy qualification. From 1 July, the NVQ and diploma routes will be replaced with one route to becoming an AAT.

Director of education Clare Morley told PQ at the recent lecturers’ conference that new technology will be at the forefront of the changes. Gone will be sittings in June and December; instead, all exams will be sat at computers, and in theory on demand.
There will be a healthy transitional period, said Morley – one year, followed by a further six months for students who need an extra boost to pass a level.
While students will do all their work on computers there will be human involvement in some of the papers. The aim is, however, for earlier results. Those marked by computer will be instant (although still provisional), and those marked by examiners will take six weeks. That is a cut of four weeks in the current 10 week cylcle.
The big changes include a separate paper on ethics and a computerised accounting unit. There have been grumbling from some tutors, however, over the lack of support and planned pilot material. The publishers have only just started work on the revised syllabuses so there will be no material available for the official launch date of 1 July.
• See next month’s PQ magazine for details of all the changes.

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