ACCA students still struggling with final optional papers

Just over a third of students sitting the Strategic Professional September optional papers managed to scrap through, according to the latest exam pass rates.

The Advanced Performance Management pass rate slipped to a worrying 30%, with the Advanced Taxation pass rate falling to just 36% (it was 44% in March 2021)

The Advanced Audit Assurance pass rate has always been low, and at 34% for September this continued the trend!

Meanwhile, the ‘best’ pass rate this time around at the Strategic Professional level was Advanced Financial Management at 37%, which again is well below the December 20220 success rate of 42%.

Performance Management stands out at the Applied Skills level. The pass rate for September was 37%, five percentage points on the June sitting.

It appears the performance management papers have now replaced the audit ones as the new ‘difficult’ papers.

Student feedback had put FR and SBR at the top of the ‘problem’ list. However, the pass rates in both these papers was 48%. For SBR that was a jump of 4 percentage points on the June 2021 pass rate.

In all some 93,635 ACCA PQs sat the September exams sitting a total of 117,693 exams.

Some 3,222 completed their final exams, becoming ACCA affiliates.

ACCA’s executive director – content, quality and innovation, Alan Hatfied, said globally over 99.9% of students sat CBEs this sitting.

He explained that ACCA is launching a Strategic Professional webinar for resources and techniques for success, as well as Ethics and Professional Skills module (EPSM) support videos available on demand.

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ACCA SEPTEMBER 2021 EXAM RESULTS: BT 83%; FA 70%; MA 66%; LW 85%; TX 52%; FR 48%; PM 37%; FM 52%; AA 39%; SBL 51%; SBR 48%; AAA 34% AFM 37%; APM 30%; ATX 36%