EXAMINER’S REPORT STANDARD OF PAPER The standard of the Financial Management paper appeared very high for that level, difficult in some instances and loaded with a lot of sub questions (a to d). This is reflected in the 16 page typewritten scheme. This combined with other factors on students’ side highlighted below produced one of the lowest pass rates in recent times in Financial Management. The questions were well spread across the subject areas and also covered well both quantitative and non-quantitative aspects of the syllabus. The questions were generally clear and precise in some instances and ambiguous in few instances that required more thinking especially the quantitative part of the questions. No typographical errors were noticed and no errors were found in the questions. The few errors found were mainly in the marking schemes which were corrected at coordination stage before conference marking commenced. No substandard question was noticed in the paper and all questions were found to be of very high standard to meet the standards expected at that level and exceed in certain instances Mark allocations were generally ok and in the few cases where it was observed not to be fairly allocated, they were slightly modified at the co-ordination level to ensure a balance in the allocation.

PERFORMANCE OF CANDIDATES The performance of the students in the paper was generally poor and below average with 6% passing the paper after marking and moderation, the lowest in recent history. It was also noticed that performance were generally worst in centres outside Accra mainly in the 3 Northern Regions, Volta Region and the other centres out of the capital Analysis of performance May 2015 % November 2015 % May 2016 % Candidates passed 153 21.22 42 7.17 39 6.04 Candidates failed 568 78.78 544 92.83 607 93.96 Total Candidates 721 100 586 100 646 100Page 2 of 31 The possible reasons for the poor performance were as follows:  Difficult paper for that level  Poor preparations by students as answers provided clearly showed lack of or inadequate knowledge of the subject area  Poor tuition services provided especially out of Accra centres  Failure of students to thoroughly study and use ICA syllabus and content manuals  Poor quality and background of students who wrote the paper vis-a-vis the very high standard of the questions and expected standard at that level  Poor knowledge by students on exam preparation and questions answering techniques  Limited access to study materials especially the out of Accra centres The poor performance was across all centres and was more pronounced in centres outside Accra. There was no any evidence of copying in the exams. The level of preparations as reflected in the content of the answers showed poor or inadequate preparation by the students to adequately answer the questions that were very high standard in nature. Basic Finance terms and terminologies were responded to as if answers were provided by non-finance students with most students trying to write English or non-finance language generally to answer the finance questions that required the understanding and use of Finance language for the easy type questions. Answers provided in some cases were unrelated to the question. NOTABLE STRENGTHS