Hoping someone can help with this. I have had a chap call me looking at becoming an ICB Bookkeeper. However he is about to let his ACCA membership lapse as he has failed on one of the exams 4 times now and is obviously deflated. He has already passed 10 of the 14 exams and it seems such as shame for him to give up now, he claims ACCA have been very unhelpful even messing up dates of exams, I have advised him to join this forum and I really dont know how to advise him apart from telling him not to give in, he also suffers from dyslexia. Any ACCA members on here who can help with this please get in touch, I am unsure if he lets his membership lapse if his 10 exam passes already gained will become invalid?
I'm also dyslexic and ACCA (13 out of 14 in my case).
Is it one of the core papers (P1 to P3) or Options (P4 to P7) that he's having difficulty with?
Paper P2 (also refered to as the beast) is officially the most difficult of any paper of any of the supervisory bodies but it is doable.
Paper P5 is a nightmare where in the exam you have difficulty working out what the question is let alone the answer.
Paper P7 expects the same level of knowledge as P2 and then add's audit and ethics knowledge to that which really is putting a second and third layers on top of an ready very big cake.
The exam dates were moved because the dates when exams would normally fall was school half term. ACCA were actually trying to be helpful to all the parents out there. The ACCA does attempt to be helpful over things like that.
Failing an exam, at the higner level 4 times is no biggy. It's not great, and sometimes there seems no fairness in failure. I know that I've had a situation where I actually tutored someone who spoke very poor English. They then went on to pass one of the P level papers and I failed it yet I know that they only had a fraction of the knowledge that I went into the hall with.
One issue at this level and my failing at P2 is that there is so much to write in so little time. You have three hours writing plus 15 minutes reading time normally to answer two heavy duty section A questions which will be scenario based and involved a lot of financial analysis that scores few if any marks before you can even start writing a management report which does carry the marks. And then you still have two or three type B questions which are shorter, simpler and carry about 40% of the marks.
Unfortunately that's five essays and associated workings in three hours. I know that I in the past have filled the 20 page answer book and three six page add ons (so 38 A4 pages in 3 hours!!!) and I've still not finished the paper and end up failing it.
Can't believe that I've got to this stage before I realised that you can do the part B questions before the part A!!!! I do them is sequence and lose so many easy points by just not having the time to get to them!
P5 last time only had a 29% pass rate to my mind due to the examiner making it so difficult to understand the question as once you see the answers a couple of months later you think Ahhh, that's what they wanted... I know that, why didn't I understand it in the exam!
The essays in P7 can end up with you getting all of the information down but still losing marks if the marker doesn't appreciate the angle that you were coming from as at this level there are often many right answers to a given question.
As for the dyslexia thing it's no excuse at all. Some of the greatest minds of the 20th century were dyslexics (Churchill, Einstein... me (lol)). We are more logical and see the end result that we are aiming for clearly... Despite my poor spelling which still lingers I actually feel quite lucky to be wired in this way which has helped me achieve some pretty spectacular things in banking and high finance so basically, no, dyslexia in absolutely no excuse.
As I say, try to find out which paper it is that's giving him jip and I'll see if I can point him in the right direction.... Which after 10 papers (so he's obviously passed one at the P level) isn't going to be giving up.
One thing that you can pass on to help him is to do :
P1, P3 and P5 together. Also do P2 and P7 together.
At this level you are expected to have all round knowledge and those two groupings are extremely interrelated.
HTH,
Shaun.
p.s. edited for spelling (no surprise there then!)
-- Edited by Shamus on Wednesday 13th of June 2012 05:24:43 PM
__________________
Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
On the Dyslexia thing just found this list o notable dyslexics :
Ann Bancroft, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Michael Faraday, Both Wright Brothers, Sir Isaac Newton, Henery Ford, Sir Richard Branson, Bill Gates, John T Chambers (CEO - Cisco Systems), William Hewlett (Co-Founder - Hewlett-Packard), F.W. Woolworth, Theo Paphitis, Winston Churchill, Dwight Eisenhower, Benjamin Franklin, Michael Heseltine, Thomas Jefferson, John F. Kennedy, Nelson Rockefeller, Woodrow Wilson, George Washington, 'Stonewall' Jackson, George Patton, Beethoven, Mozart, Steven Speilberg And me
There you go. It should be the one's who don't have dyslexia that can use it as an excuse.
__________________
Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
Thank you for this and for your detailed response, the chap in question was so deflated to the point of giving up and it appears he was having the same problems as your good self, but to even consider giving up after gaining 10 of the 14 passes shows how failing the exam 4 times has left a student of ACCA totally lacking in confidence, my heart went out to him. As I say I did send him a link to the forum and hope he joins but for the meantime I will send a link to your response. Thanks again Shaun your a diamond.
