My Exam Results - December 2006

My results for the CIPFA exams I took in December were published today.

Subject	Marks	Result
Finance & Performance Reporting (FPR)	45	Fail
Governance & Public Policy (GPP)	57	Pass

I am very happy that I passed GPP. It is a more discursive subject and my weakness in the past has been to wander off-topic, covering valid points but not what the question asked for. In June I achieved 39% so I am more than happy with 57.

I would have loved to have passed FPR, but I have found that the biggest challenge for me in this subject is the time constraints. When I first took the exam in June I spent too long on the first two questions meaning that I ran out of time on the remaining three. All 5 questions are worth 20 marks each, this I feel is the main reason I only got 33% last time. In December I was very strict on myself. I allocated each question the same amount of time and then forced myself to move on when that had expired. I still ran out of time, but at least I had given each question a good go.

What next? Well I plan to resit FPR and also take one new course. As I have two more to do from the Diploma level I will leave the more technical paper 'Accounting for Decision Making' (ADM) for later and take the two half papers 'Public Finance & Taxation' (PF&T) in June. Courses for these will start in February.