PQ magazine June 2019
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WHO IS LOOKING AFTER YOUR MENTAL WELLBEING? Do the accountancy bodies do enough to ensure the mental wellbeing of their students? Mental Health Awareness week took place from 13-19 May, and PQ was shocked at the lack of help and advice coming from the profession. As we have been told, there is no regulatory requirement for the bodies to support students with mental health issues. That responsibility
lies firmly with training providers, who have direct contact with the students, and their employers. There are expectations, and CIPFA appears to be leading the way. It is currently working with the South East Student Network to develop a programme of support that it plans to roll out to other areas. CABA, which works with ICAEW
students and members, has also been groundbreaking in this area. We can’t praise this organisation enough. It launched its latest mental health campaign in mid-April with the aim of boosting resilience, and helping people balance the pressures of work, life and exams. • Watch out for our ‘Wellbeing – State of Accountancy’ survey next month.
PRACTICE WILL MAKE PERFECT ACCA is introducing a new ‘Practice Solution’ platform that will shake-up the tuition market and directly help students manage the changeover to CBEs at the Strategic Professional level in 2020. As part of a wide-ranging package of support the practice solution will contain exam questions that replicate and mimic the exact look and feel of Pearson Vue software. All students will also be given access to specimen and past exams via ACCA ‘instance’. This will be free, and PQs will be able to access this as often as they like. James Patrick, ACCA Head of Professional Education, told the Global Learning Providers’ Conference that the practice solution platform “will help students understand the exam software inside out”, so they can demonstrate their finance ability in the live online exam. “We believe that replicating this live environment will really help students,” Patrick explained. In terms of timescale, the first practice solution will be available nine months before the first strategic professional CBE. The first exams (being piloted in UK, Ireland and Czech Republic) are in March 2020, so ACCA is
looking for launch date of June 2019. There are plans to then extend the platform to the Applied Skills Level. The practice solution platform is not just for students. Learning providers have been invited
to develop their own version of the ACCA platform, free of charge. They will be then able to host their own content and questions, mark these questions and provide feedback. ACCA told the GLPC that after the first wave of Strategic Professional CBEs it will be phasing in the CBE exams into other countries from September 2020. However, after listening to feedback it has decided there will be no parallel running of CBE and paper exams. “This only adds to students’ confusion,” said Judith Bennett, Director of Professional Qualifications. ACCA has also unveiled a new data analytics unit for the Ethics and Professional Skills model, and is looking to introduce an element of peer assessment capability in the case study unit. Students will have to submit a presentation, which will then be assessed by other students. So, all students are to become assessors! Further peer assessments are planned to be introduced in other assessments over time. Finally, two new technical performance objectives have also been added to part of ACCA’s PER. Business advisory, and data analysis and decision support are now areas PQs can focus on.
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