Candidates' Weakness
Some of the observed weaknesses in the candidates’ scripts were:
- Poor understanding of the rudiments of financial accounting and basic principles of bookkeeping;
- Lack of coverage of topics in the syllabus towards preparation for the examination;
- Poor use of English grammar and expressions in explaining points;
- Wrong placement of values and digits in computations;
- Posting of entries with wrong narrations and account headings;
- Inability to capture the necessary adjustments which have mark-earning capacity;
- Poor knowledge of candidates to interprete theory questions requirement from measurable verbs or scenario questions both in theory and practice sections;
- Inappropriate use of formulas for computations;
- Failure to categorise items into appropriate account headings.
Some of these weaknesses were significantly reflected in the questions testing the following topics:
- Identification of Error/ Trial Balance
- Accounting Information;
- Accounting Ratio;
- Realization Account/ Partners’ Capital Account;
- Company Account.
SUGGESTED REMEDIES
- Candidates should improve in the application of accounting principles and fundamentals during practice and preparation for the examination.
- Teachers should place more emphasis on rudiments and practical aspects of the syllabus for teaching and learning Financial Accounting in schools.
- Candidates should prepare very well by covering all aspects of the syllabus before writing the examination.
- Teachers should make use of past question papers during revision exercises for comprehensive exposition on examiners’ requirements for each question in preparing for examinations.
- During examination revision, teachers should not only concentrate on SS3 topics but cover both the SS1 and SS2 topics respectively.
- Qualified teachers should be employed to teach Financial Accounting in schools.
- Candidates should improve in their studies to master the appropriate use of terminologies, narrations, headings and currency values in accounting.
- Candidates should read to engage themselves in practicalizing accounting topics to real life situations to aid their better performance to scenario questions.
- Candidates should prioritize personal study of topics in the syllabus to ascertain their readiness for examination.