Examiner’s report- F8 Audit and Assurance

General Comments

The examination consisted of five compulsory questions. Question 1 for 30 marks, question 2 for 10 marks as well as three further questions of 20 marks each.

The vast majority of candidates attempted all five questions, and there was little evidence of time pressure.

Where questions were left unanswered, this appeared to be due to a lack of knowledge or poor exam technique, as opposed to time pressure.

Candidates performed particularly well on questions 1b, 1c, 2a, 2b, 3d, 4a, 4b and 5b. The questions candidates found most challenging were questions 1d, 3b, 3c, 5a and 5d. This is mainly due to a lack of technical knowledge and due to a failure to read question requirements carefully.

A number of common issues arose in candidates’ answers:

•Failing to read the question requirement carefully and therefore providing irrelevant or generic answers which scored few if any marks.

•Poor time management between questions, some candidates wrote far too much for some questions, such as 1a and this put them under time pressure to finish remaining questions.

•Failure to fully identify all the question requirements, “identify and explain” are two separate requirements and both required an answer.

•Not learning lessons from previous examiner’s reports and hence making the same mistakes, especially in relation to audit risk and audit reports.

•Poor layout of answers, including not using columns for questions such as 1a, 3a, 4a and 5b when this would have helped to maximize marks.

Once again future candidates are reminded that audit reports is a key element of the syllabus and hence an understanding of how an audit report can be modified and in which circumstances, is considered very important for this exam.