Incorporating NQ magazine
February 2024
www.pqmagazine.com/www.pqjobs.co.uk
A ‘ROBUST’ SET OF ACCA EXAM PASS RATES
The December pass rates are in, and ACCA is calling them a ‘robust’ set of results. In all, 132,301 exams were taken and 4,503 students completed all their exams and now move to affiliate status. Some 49% of those sitting the Advanced Taxation paper passed – a record pass rate for this Strategic Professional Option. The AFM pass rate also held steady at 45%. However, some two in three candidates are still failing the APM and AAA papers. Since spring 2021 neither of these papers pass rates has gone above 34%, except APM in March 2023, when it rose to the dizzy height of 35%. Meanwhile, the SBL pass rate was the highest ever at 52%, and exactly half of those sitting SBR passed.
The Applied Skills pass rates held steady this time around too. Those sitting the Taxation paper manged a 54% pass rate, with the Audit and Assurance paper having the lowest pass
rate at 41%. PM wasn’t far behind at 42%, so no real change there. Alan Hatfield, executive director – content, quality and innovation, said: “Huge congratulations to the students who have achieved success in this session, it’s always pleasing to see so many students focus on their journey towards ACCA membership as demonstrated by this robust set of results.” He also reminded students that pass rates remain up to 20% better for students who use the ACCAA exam Practice Platform. ACCA DECEMBER 2023 PASS RATES: BT 85%; FA 69%; MA 68%; LW 78%; TX 54%; FR 48%; PM 42%; FM 48%; AA 41%; SBL 52%; SBR 50%; AAA 34%; AFM 45%; SPM 34%; ATX 49%
HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE? Some 184,642 accountancy students are still trying to get qualified five years after they started their professional studies. That is 31.54% of all the PQs signed up with ACCA, CIMA, CIPFA, ICAEW, CAI, ICAS and the AIA. The concern is that this percentage seems to be creeping up each year. Back in January 2022, the number of students who had been studying for more than five years was 30%. The figures, compiled by the Financial Reporting Council every year, show there are 585,385 students studying worldwide with these seven bodies, which are based in the UK and Ireland. And while ACCA may have the most students still studying with them and paying their subscriptions
after half a decade at 143,609 (or 32.79%), this is not the biggest percentage. That ‘honour’ goes to CIPFA, where 51.93% of its students (3,209) are still trying to get qualified five years after starting their journey. At CIMA the figure of 31,861 represents 36.38% of the student base. In the past, some experts had ventured that the rise in the length of students’ studies was due to the pandemic; however, postpandemic the number still seems to be rising. It isn’t taking everyone five years to get qualified, though. CAI, ICAEW and ICAS have over 85% of their students complete their training in four years or less. Only 14%, 12% and 12% of their students respectively were registered for more than four years as at 31 December 2022. The FRC’s key facts and trends survey also shows that since 2018 all the accountancy bodies,
except CIPFA, have increased their percentage of female members worldwide. That said, at the ICAEW just 31% of members are women. Meanwhile, CIPFA has 33% members who are female and ICAS 35%. At ACCA some 48% of its members are women. That means, over four years between 2018 and
2022, overall female members increased just one percentage point – from 37% to 38%. However, the overall percentage of female students (50%) is greater than the overall percentage of female members by some distance. ACCA had the largest percentage of female students in 2022 at 60%.
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