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Drop out rate dilemma

26 November 2009

One in 10 accountancy students sign up for an exam may never sit them, according the research undertaken by PQ magazine.

The worry is that the accountancy bodies are just taking the fees and the true pressures on the PQ are never recognised. So what should the bodies being doing – taking the money or providing counselling about how professional exams work?
The worry is that the bodies have set up a system where they are dependent on student fees to ‘service members’. In effect members through ‘elected’ councils take the money from vunerable students to spend on themselves!.
PQ asked the bodies for their current stats, because despite our asking the oversight body POBA, they weren’t asking the question, and didn’t seemed that interested either.
Well, according to the AAT the average number of ‘absences for the last four sittings is 6.3%. CIMA revealed that this varies from level-to-level and paper-to-paper. Work commitments are seen as the biggest reason why students sign up and then are unable to sit. In some papers the non-turn up rate is as high as 10%, but at strategic level this is much lower and almost non-existent at TOPCIMA.
For the ICAEW no-shows at the advanced stage exams are typically low, less than 1%, however this figure doesn’t include people who withdraw in advance of the exam.
CIPFA don’t have these figures available and the ACCA said this information ‘is not in the public domain’. Our question is why not!

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