CPA pass rate improves, general performance still wanting

By Edward Kayiwa

Despite registering a slight improvement in the average pass rate for the Certified Public Accountants examination of August 2015, the average pass rate for the accountants remained significantly low compared to November 2014.

According to the exams released recently, the pass rate slightly improved to 38.5% in August, from 36.2% in June 2015, having dropped from 42.1% in November last year.

“Many students do not get proper preparation for the exams, as many decide to dodge tutorials thinking they can get around the exams. Others, however, are self-sponsored students who toil to get their tuition, and this affects their concentration,” said Sunday Protazio, the CPA Uganda vice president, during the exams release at Imperial Royal Hotel.

CPA Protazio Begumisa, Vice President, Council of ICAPU (Left) and Mathew Bukenya, Executive Secretary, UNEB (Left) displaying public Accountants Examination Results on Friday, 18th at Imperial Royale Hotel in Kampala Photo by Shamim Saad.
 

 

Only 127 students completed the certified public accountants course, out of the 3,289 candidates who sat for the examinations in August 2015.

In the June 2015 ICPAU results, only 233 out of 5,313 candidates passed to become Certified Public Accountants of Uganda.

Yet still, in November 2014, only 192 out of 5,259 candidates that sat for CPA exams at various stages completed and passed.

Asked whether the trivial pass rate was cause for worry, Protazio was first adamant, before suggesting that this is a sign that CPA exams are critical and the CPAs that are released into the market are the most competent people that passed the exams.

The exam results were released by Mathew Bukenya, the secretary of the public accountants examinations board (PAEB).

Bukenya said the August examination siting was recently introduced for CPA students to facilitate transition into the new CPA syllabus.

“Initially, we had two examination sessions for June and November of every year, but we have now introduced a third one in accordance with section 16 of the Accountants act, 2013, to facilitate a change of syllabus,” Bukenya said.

According to the results, there was a remarkable improvement in the performance of the female candidates, with 43 out of the 127 (33.9%) who passed being female.

The results also show that arithmetic subjects such as financial reporting, corporate financial management, and management accounting and finance were not done well.

For instance, in financial reporting, out of 485 students that sat for the paper, only 125 passed, representing a 25.8% pass rate.

The worst performed papers, according to the results; were corporate finance management, quantitative techniques and professional ethics and values fetching a 15.7%, 24.1%, and 29.8% pass rates respectively.

Students performed well in Business management and computing (70.3%), Business policy and strategy (64.4%), and taxation (60.1%), according to Bukenya.

The chief executive officer, ICPAU, Derrick Nkajja, attributed the poor performance on students’ failure to cover the entire syllabus and resorting to selective reading as well as the inability to translate the knowledge into applicable case scenarios.