Course: HRM and Organisational Behaviour

Examination Diet: June 2014 Stage: 3

Overall, a poor set of answers that were weak on almost every count. Students were fixed on the part of Chapter
1 that highlighted the differences between personnel management and HRM. This was also the case with
question B2 in which students provided lengthy background detail on training in general but the answers were
rather unfocused.

Course: Auditing and CIFA

Examination Diet: June 2014 Stage: 3
Too many fails out of the 121 candidates. This indicates a relatively high level of lack of preparation. As
previously there are still some candidates who cannot express themselves in the English language. There
continues to be an approach of pinning all effort on question B1 and then hoping to gain marks by piecemeal
effort elsewhere. There are indications that candidates memorise an answer to a question of a previous year and
fail to notice that the structure of questions changes even when the area of coverage is the same. There are two
candidates with marks above 70, indicating that it is possible to produce work of distinction standard and these 2
candidates should be commended.

Course: Strategic Management

Results at this centre are below the average at this diet. It seems that students are relying too much on past
papers and unable to adapt and apply their knowledge to the questions in the exam.

Question A1:
Majority of students misread question A1-f and thus answered a different question.

Section C Overall:
In many cases only one of the two sub-questions was answered, which appeared to be independent of potential
time constraints. It appears that students were given past exams, which in some cases obviously corresponded
with questions in this exam. In parts, this can be seen when comparing language. However, it is apparent in the
structure of answers which is identical and leaves out some (the same) expected parts of the answer.

Question C1:
Four students answered in a way that was completely unrelated to the question, i.e. related to a question not
part of this exam. It can only be speculated that it was part of a former exam.

Question C2:
The majority of students answered this question, using pretty much the same limited approach to it.

Course: Operations Management 1 / Operations Management 2

A very wide spread of marks was evident with this centre. The lowest mark recorded was 0% because of empty
answer sheets being returned. However, one candidate produced a mark of 70% but the average mark was still
too low- just 34% and only 55% of students being successful with the majority of those achieving low grade D
or E marks. Students here struggled most with the accuracy and the level of detail of the answers they provided .
While the majority had memorised the key terms for each question, it was a challenge for them to accurately
explain the terms and to put them into context. There was very little evidence of any form of critical thinking.
Most students attempted to give examples to illustrate their points; however, further work is needed to increase
the clarity and accuracy of these examples.

Several students did not answer three questions, which automatically makes it very difficult for them to pass the
exam. There was also evidence of some time management issues, as the quality of answers generally declined
from the first to the last one answered. The last question attempted was often very brief and thus did not warrant
high marks