With the change in the ACCA curriculum and introduction of the new qualification a significant difference as compared to the old ACCA system is the flexibility on the intermediate or the fundamental skills module which consists of 6 papers (all covering different aspects).
On the old ACCA system students had to appear for exams in a fixed order starting from Paper 2.1 to Paper 2.6. On the contrary the new system provides students with a chance to choose from the 6 papers within the level and they may select to do the same in any manner they like as long as they adhere to the ACCA rule on permitting students to write only 4 papers per diet.
Although this gives students a unique opportunity to plan and take their education and career ahead along with work pressures by selecting the most fruitful combination, it often puts students in a dilemma concerning which papers to take first and which to take in the same sitting. Working for a training company, and with the limited experience attained from work, I have noted that a common student often takes up 2 to 3 exams at a time, although there are few who go for 4 subjects per sitting.
A lot of consideration needs to go into the selection of a reasonable combination of two or three papers, as the case maybe. It is vital to note that there is no perfect combination that can be adopted by all alike. Depending on the interest and prior knowledge students may choose the subjects they think would fit in well as a combination and also aid their work life.
To begin with, F5- Performance management is an extension of Paper F2 and requires some amount of prior knowledge and understanding of principles of costing and management accounting. But having completed (pass/exempt) from F2 students are expected to be aware of this before they come onto this.
Paper F4-Corporate law is the only paper on ACCA which covers core law and hence it is best advised to take the exam early on. As no future exam requires this depth of understanding on law, it is prudent to pass the examination at the earliest. Certainly as ACCA affiliates and members, we should strive to keep ourselves updated with the developments in the legal front but it is advisable to get the examination out of the way before students move onto the tougher higher level exams.
Paper F6- the basic taxation paper on ACCA imparts & tests the basics on taxation and acts as a pre-cursor for paper P6. Unless a student intends to take Adv.tax in Professional level, the situation is similar to F4 and I would suggest that the paper is done at the first sitting on this level. Besides some basic knowledge of tax is required for F9 (for Investment appraisal etc) and thus best to do F6 as early as one can.
Given a chance to write my ACCA exams again and a choice of 3 papers out of 6, I would personally vote for papers F4, F5 and F6 on my first sitting on the fundamental skill level - although depending on circumstances and work-life exposure students would take up a different grouping
As there is still more to say on this topic and also to discuss about papers F7,F8 & F9 – I stop for now and will be back with my next blog where I would take this up from where I have left it now. I appreciate this is a very subtle topic and do not know how much students will benefit from this, but I sincerely hope this helps at least a few students progressing from fundamental knowledge level to the skills module to make an appropriate choice
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