How to master SBL

Top tutor Shane O’Grady offers three top tips for success in the Strategic Business Leader exam.

ACCA’s SBL exam is unlike any other in the ACCA qualification. It challenges students to apply technical knowledge, strategic thinking, and professional skills.

Use pre-seen material wisely

The introduction of the pre-seen material in September 2023 has been an excellent development. Use the pre-seen material for familiarisation, not speculation. Think logically about the fallacy of using the pre-seen material to predict exam topics.

There are at least three completely different exams for each exam sitting; a morning exam, an afternoon exam and a contingency exam for students who experience technical difficulties.

The exact same pre-seen material is used for those completely different exams. The unseen exhibits in each exam give the SBL examination team free rein to ask anything on the SBL syllabus.

Focus on professional skills

Professional skills account for 20% of the marks in the SBL exam, so think ‘CCASE’ – Communication, Commercial Acumen, Analysis, Scepticism and Evaluation.

Each professional skill appears once on the exam (for four marks). Communication is often linked to a task that requires the slides response option. Practice the use of ‘Notes’ and ‘Presenter View’ in Microsoft PowerPoint to fully understand the dynamic of slides and notes in the exam. Slides are visual aids so make sure that they are brief, whereas the notes are where the bulk of your answer should appear. Use different font sizes and indentation to symbolise the hierarchy and relationship between the slide title, main (parent) bullets, and sub (child) bullets.

Practice with purpose

Use the Practice Platform to work through past papers, specimen exams and the official ACCA mock exam. Exam kit questions may seem appealing due to their brevity and convenience, but they do not replicate real exam conditions.
As exams approach, students often say they are ‘practising lots of questions’. But this brings up two critical issues:

  • What does that practice actually involve?
  • Who is reviewing and providing feedback on that practice?

Simply reading a question and then jumping straight to the solution is not meaningful practice. To truly improve, you need to simulate exam conditions and receive feedback on your performance. Seek input from fellow students, workplace mentors, recently qualified members and/or tutors to help identify areas for improvement and build exam confidence.

Conclusion

The official syllabus and study guide states that “the SBL examination has a broad syllabus and the assessment style as a fully integrated exam requires more teaching and learning time than in the other exams at this level”. However, this doesn’t mean that you need to fear the SBL exam. You just need to approach it properly to maximise your chances of passing.