Skills Test

Re:Skills Test

Hi Steve

You will need to nominate someone to supervise you when sitting your actual skills test - if you call your training provider they should be able to provide you with the form. They will call this person and go through the rules with them. This cannot be someone you are related to or a friend, it is best to get someone from work i.e. my boss is down as my supervisor.

You should receive mock skills tests from your training provider, these are sat at home under exam conditions (but without supervision) and sent off to be marked.

Your actual skills test will then be sent to your nominated supervisor and you will sit under proper supervised exam conditions and give the paper back to them and then they send it off to your training provider to be marked.

Re:Skills Test

Hi Steve,

The skills tests will provide most of the evidence for each unit - you may have to do some supplemental coursework or provide workplace evidence for a few things.

The exceptions to this are Units 22 and 23 - Health and Safety and Achieving Personal Effectiveness which are both evidence based and widely regarded as a right pain to do.

There's no actual requirement to pass the skills tests before you sit the exam(s) - only one at Foundation - but I think it's a good idea to do so. The tests tend to be slightly harder than the exams so they can be good preparation. I missed the Unit 5 skills test last year as I was ill and ended up taking it after the exam. Incidently, both were hard but the skills test was a right pig.

The other main things about skills tests are that the marking is more stringent than the exams but as long as you haven't made a complete mess of it, you get the chance to make corrections. If you should fail you also don't have to wait to do a re-sit. Fail the exam and you've 6 months to wait to do it again.

Chris

Re:Skills Test

Hard for me to say as I don't do distance learning. A lot will depend on how easy/hard you find the going.

I think the best advice is to draw up a timetable, give yourself fixed dates for the skills tests and work towards those. Monitor your progress and adjust the hours you work accordingly. Thinking back to my Foundation, I think we did about 8 weeks per unit for 1-3 and 21 and 4 weeks for Unit 4, which left a fair amount of time for exam revision.

The exam is the one immovable object here and if you fail you have to wait six months for a re-sit. It covers units 1-3 so you might want to focus on those. In addition, those three units cover the basic principles of the double-entry system which are really the most important things you'll learn at Foundation.

Unit 4 is really quite easy so you can probably do it pretty quickly.

Unit 21 is the computer unit how much time this takes probably depends on how good you are with computers in the first place (as you're here, I'll assume you have a reasonable knowledge). I found it a breeze.

You'll also have to find time for Units 22 and 23 (waste of time IMO) which you should be looking to at least make a start on fairly early. I rattled these of in about 2 weeks after the exam - not though a course of action I'd particularly recommend.

It's actually less work than that makes it sound

Chris ( who really should be working and not writing long, rambling posts here)

Re:Skills Test

I've just finished Intermediate, starting Tech in September. I don't have a background in accounting just some basic business bookkeeping and financial control stuff.

I've not really found it too bad overall though there have definitely been parts I've found a bit challenging. Mostly, though it's the amount of stuff you need to learn rather than any of it being particularly complex. It's really just a matter of puting the hours in.

Chris

Re:Skills Test

I took roughly 9 months for each but that's the college timescale.

As you've got accounts experience, I can't see Foundation being a problem. You might have to learn to do things the AAT way is all