Examiner has commented in the Post Exam Guide that a large number of students did well in the Nov 2011 E3 Exam yet its Global pass rate was one of the lowest (43%).  You must be thinking how you can improve and pass in the upcoming resits late Feb/ early March.  Let's look at the examier's comment by question.

Question 1 was generally well answered.  In contrast to paper E1 and E2 which are purely essay type papers, E3 has incoporated some calculation (usually worth about 10 marks).  It should be a good news for those who are good at Maths and number crunching.  In fact, I always think these are good easy marks as the calculation itself isn't very difficult and complex.  The difficult part is to find out all the relevant data within the scenario and extract them for calculation within such a tight timeframe.

There are 2 ways to get better at this:

1) Practice as many past papers/ questions as possible under exam condition (i.e. 1.8 mins per mark available). 

2) Highlight all the relevant information/ data, or even write them out as a list on the question paper, during the 20 mins reading time.  

The examiner has also mentioned that although the requirement has not specifically asked for a comparison of the current revenue with the proposed revenue, students should have used their higher level knowledge and understanding of management accounting to have recognised that this would provide a clear indication of the impact of the proposed strategies.  Students must be able to interpret requirements and to identify the information which will satisfy the question.  The Strategic papers are advanced paper within the CIMA qualification and you should always think like a business person when you are answering the questions.

Question 2 was a popular choice but this question was not well answered.  Although many students demonstrated sound knowledge of Porter's Five Forces and Porter's Diamond, far too many answer were descriptive rather than analytical.  It is vital to apply your knowledge to the scenario

Question 3 was about the CIMA ethical code (which is a popular topic in recent exam sittings) and this question was generally well answered.  Similar to Q2, although many students were able to present 3 appropiate principles, few were then able to recommend with reasons, why these principles should be included.   This was the first time that the examiner had required a high level of application of the ethical code and unfortunately, many students did not perform well. 

Question 4 was on Performance Management System and it was reasonably well answer.  However some students had fallen into the trap of a basic error - not reading the question carefully.  They spent far too much of their answer making recommendations for imrovements to the system, which was not required in part (a) but was askd in only part (b).  If they had read all questions requirements carefully, they would not have make the same silly mistake.

Strategic papers are tough because examiner's expectations on students are very high.  However, as I have said in my recent blog on Marathon and CIMA, you are almost reaching the finishing line.  Hang in there and don't give up, you will soon be able to enjoy the taste of success.