XAMINER’S REPORT STANDARD OF THE PAPER The Quantitative Tools in Business, Paper 1.4, taken in May was generally well written and the questions adequately cover the Level One Syllabus and the ICAG Manual. The standard of the Paper is comparable to the November 2015 Paper but it is a little different in format and style from the previously administered Papers. The marking scheme was well-drawn; every sub-question had marks duly allocated and the marks were adequate for each question ( i.e. it followed the weighting in the revised syllabus). Finally, I will like to say that the questions were evenly spread over the topics in the syllabus. The only limitations of the paper are inadequate hints on Question Two (ii) and the preamble of Question Three. However, the marking scheme was straight forward and candidates were rewarded for any meaningful comment or explanation.

GENERAL PERFORMANCE OF CANDIDATES The general performance of candidates can be described as below average. Majority of the candidates who wrote the paper at centres outside Accra, Kumasi and Cape Coast performed extremely poorly with a few scoring above 40%. The few high performers recorded are found in Accra, Kumasi and Cape Coast. Indeed the best candidate scored 89% and he wrote the paper at the Cape Coast centre. About half-dozen of candidates scored between 0% and 2%. There were no traceable copying by candidates except that some candidates decided to copy the questions into their booklets before solving them. Majority of candidates also wasted their limited time trying to explain or give interpretation of symbols in the formulae before use. There were a lot of bad numbering of questions and examiners went through some difficulties trying to separate answered questions for marking and scoring. Per the scripts submitted for marking this year’s May Examination diet, one will conclude that candidates were not adequately prepared for the paper and this has reflected in the general performance. In fact, few candidates decided to present blank booklets for marking in this diet.