General Comments
This paperconsisted of twenty 2 mark (40 marks in total) multiple choice questions (MCQs)in Section A which are electronically marked and a 60 mark Section B with two15 mark and one 30 mark question which are professionally marked. Candidates’performance on both sections was closely correlated and the overall performancehas maintained the satisfactory performance of recent diets.
The paper wasregarded by most commentators as a fair test of familiar topics which awell-prepared candidate should have comfortably passed.
Section A
As may beexpected, the scores on individual MCQs varied considerably and the followingcomments relate to two questions that were not very well answered.
Question 3
Although mostitems in financial statements areshown at their historical cost, increasingly the IASB is requiring or allowingcurrent cost to be used in many areas of financial reporting. Question 19
This questioninvolves a finance lease and an operating lease which require differenttreatments. The requirement is for the amount of the charge to the profit orloss account for both leases. Observing the dates given, the finance leasecharge is based on a full year and comprises of depreciation of the fair valueof the plant plus a finance cost; whereas the operating lease charge is anapportionment of the annual rental as it covers only nine months of the currentyear. Section B
The questions insection B covered the areas which in past papers were usually regarded as'core' topics and as such were generally well answered, particularly Q3 onconsolidation.
A welcomingfeature of this diet, perhaps due to the new structure, is that most candidatesattempted all the required questions in section B, although question 1 was themost often omitted when not all questions were attempted.
Despite the above,there were still some areas of poor examination technique, in particular, notreading (or thinking about) the question requirements carefully enough. Thiswas particularly true of Q1 (ratio calculation and interpretation) where anumber of candidates calculated and discussed ratios that were not required andprovided a revised statement of financial position. This wasted considerabletime and, no matter how accurate the calculations may be and how good theirinterpretation, this gained no marks.
Other familiarpoor examination technique issues were: a lack of understandable workings forfigures and poor handwriting that many markers struggled to read.