Saturday, August 30, 2008

If you are studying ACCA F5, ...

In June 2008 sittings, F5 was the one with the lowest passing rate among all fundamental level papers. The current passing rate of 28% is even lower than that of the previous sitting. With that in mind, students should realize that this particular paper demands quite a lot of efforts.

You can compare the passing rates of F5 with other papers in the following table.
















There are a few things I would like to highlight if you are going to attempt F5 in this coming exam.

First of all, the thorough understanding of the topics under the syllabus is critical. In addition to textbooks and exam kits, you may read through online articles published on Student Accountant. For your reference, I list them down in the following.

  1. Costing basics for the 21st century
  2. Just-in-time operations and backflush accounting
  3. The ABC of overheads
  4. Relevant costs for decisions
  5. Relevant costs for decisions Part 2: identifying relevant costs
  6. Beyond Budgeting
  7. Variance analysis
  8. Variance analysis - part 1
  9. Standard costs - an effective tool for business?
  10. Standard costing and fixed and flexed budgets
  11. Performance Management
  12. The balance scorecard
These articles help improve your level of understanding on the subject matters.

Another thing is that, in the exam hall, time manageement is crucial although this is so not just for this paper. I didn't have enought time to complete the whole paper on jun 2008 sitting. About 30 marks of the paper was left answered although this is partly due to my lack of exam practice.

These are just some minor tips I could share with you as a student who attempted F5 in the last sitting. Hopefully these bits of information plus your hard work guarantee a pass for you in F5.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi there, thank you for this post. I am currently studying F5 and will take the exam in Dec 08. At the taught course, i had a great understanding so far however, sitting now at home trying to answer the mock exam, is a different story! It's so hard...