Bookkeeping Level 2 Past Papers

[Juvencio Parise]

Hiall, I a studying with Open Study college and have completed both assessments which I am still awaiting to receive back marked! I was wondering if anyone had any practice papers or past exam papers they could email to me or is there ones online that you can practice from??

I'm also studying Level 2 bookkeeping with Open Study College and am at the stage where I need to practice for exams. If anyone has any practice papers or past exams (B1 and B2) they could email me I'd be extremely grateful. Its been a long time since I've sat an exam and would like to do as many mocks as possible before taking the actual exam.

Hi Lauren & Lisa,

The mock papers for the online exams are also online and cannot be shared. So, if your provider does not include mock papers with your study you'd need to purchase these direct from ICB. They'll cost 10 per paper and there are two available for most exams.

Good luck.

Before reading, please note that this is an extremely subjective blog. What I find difficult another person may not and vice versa. Find the details of my academic background here if interested (no prior accounting experience). Therefore, this is my personal opinion on how hard the ICAEW ACA exams are. I will also include ICAEW pass rates from the ICAEW website throughout to help give a clearer, more factual picture of ACA exam difficulty. Finally, I have ranked these exams in order of difficulty. I have shared my exam marks here too for further context!

This blog is grouped into the three ACA Levels (Certificate, Professional and Advanced) to discuss the ACA exam difficulty. For additional details on an individual module basis, please refer to those hyperlinked 15 ACA Exams Breakdown three part blogs.

The most common question I get asked around ACA exam difficulty is asking how hard the exams are with a comparison. For example, are ACA exams harder than university exams/A-Levels? It is worth mentioning that in my first blog I did mention the Level 7 ACA Apprenticeship is equivalent to a Masters. Therefore naturally you would think the ACA would be much harder.

Conversely, I think passing the exams is actually quite achievable. Although there were times I did not think this was the case when sitting the mock examinations. The struggle with ACA exams comes where you have to balance studying with a full time job and all the other ACA requirements. The difficulty can be intensified by having to sit more than one exam at once. I will be discussing these aspects in later blog posts so join the journey to find out more.

To answer the question how hard is the ACA as a whole, as a BSc Economics and Mathematics graduate with no prior accounting experience, the ACA exams are difficult. They are difficult but they are definitely passable and I did pass all exams first time with a lot of hard work to achieve this. The majority (70%+) of students in my graduate intake did too.

Note: If you are considering studying towards the ACA with no prior accounting experience, I would recommend reading this book I have written. It will teach you the basics of accounting and hopefully help you find out if you will have an interest in accounting before starting.

Back to the ACA, the content itself is not too complex if you are taught well and put in the time to learn it. I was taught by Kaplan and thought they were brilliant. There is just a lot of content in each exam and a lot to remember. Some exams are open book as discussed in previous blogs but the time pressure and extent of application adds difficulty.

The good thing about these exams is that ICAEW have many resources available to help you pass. There is a study manual and question bank full of plenty of practise questions for each exam as well as past papers and sample papers. Learning providers also provide further resources and assistance and hopefully my ACA blogs help too! You employer may also provide you with support through study days or extra notes to help. Essentially you should have all the information you need to do well in these exams if you put in the time to fully prepare.

Certificate Level exams are all predominantly multiple choice. This sounds easy but honestly these exams should not be underestimated. I would rank Management Information (MI) to be rank highly for ACA exam difficulty, see below. Some of these exams such as MI are not completely multiple choice and these other areas can actually be quite tricky. Additionally, as I did not have an accounting background there was a lot to learn and it can be seen as learning a new language. You must nail this to do well in the following Levels.

The ICAEW question banks are very helpful for these ACA modules. Sometimes questions from the question bank may appear in the real exam or may be very similar. I ensured to complete all question banks at least once through, sometimes twice. This involved non-stop question practice, even at train stations and all over. Others definitely did not do as much question practice but still passed. I do think though that with some good practice you should be fine for these exams. There is little time pressure at this stage.

However, that being said I do think these questions can be difficult. The different multiple choice options in the more wordy exams are sometimes very similar. It feels like ICAEW are trying to catch you out. Even with all the practice I was rarely certain I passed these exams because of this. The most similar comparison I can think of would be your driving theory test but these ACA exams are harder. The pass mark is 55% though which helps!

ICAEW have provided exam statistics for the Certificate Level exams. You do need to be an ICAEW member to access these for this Level. I will therefore not disclose these individual exam details but I will say the average ICAEW pass rate is above 80%. On a first attempt only basis, the ICAEW pass rate is higher but for re-sits it is quite a bit lower. This indicates if you fail once you are more likely to fail again. Additionally, Accounting (AC) and MI are have the lowest ICAEW pass rates so it is not just me who found MI tricky. Hopefully these statistics boost your confidence but like I said, you do need to work for it!

The Professional Level exams are definitely a huge step up from Certificate Level and I would say they are much harder. There is a lot of content in these exams so there is of course a lot to learn. What makes them more difficult is the fact that they are quite time pressured too. Given the content and all of these factors, I do think these exams at a stretch can be compared to A-Levels/University exams.

Again with these exams and the question banks I do think they are definitely ones that can be passed with practice. The past exam papers tend to have a fairly similar structure and I would say they do not have many surprises. Different topics will come up year on year but it is a case of which one more than anything else. BPT is one I will discuss separately along with the Advanced Level exams. This is because this exam is slightly different to the rest of the Professional exams.

The Professional exams pass mark is 55% too. With these exams I am genuinely not sure if they are scaled; I am unsure whether marks are inflated or deflated to ensure a set number of people pass. You will see the pass marks below are similar year on year but there is no proof of scaling. I can confirm that the exams are moderated as I was asked to be a moderator. This is where after passing the exams you will be asked to sit the same exam again and comment on the ACA exam difficulty. Perhaps this is why the ICAEW pass rate is usually similar.

The exam statistics I will be discussing are for the exam sittings I sat. These were in March 2019 and September 2019. I sat three Professional Level exams at a time and will discuss this intensity in a later blog. Join my journey so you do not miss this.

These statistics include international students; students who English is a second language to. I would therefore say others in the UK are at an advantage as there is no language barrier. This also includes self-taught, independent students who do not have as much support as those with say Kaplan or BPP.

Moving onto September 2019, we can see a similar trend. The ICAEW pass rate is higher than 70% for all except BPI. However, this is likely to be due to the number of students sitting the exam being so low.

These three exams (BPT, CR and SBM) are completely open book and have a great deal of content. These are somewhat similar to university exams where you have to learn say ten topics and only three will come up. However, these exams have many, many more topics that could come up and then only a few will be examined in detail. This is why the open book does help but it means you need an awareness of numerous areas.

A significant amount of question practice is needed for these exams, especially BPT where application is key. The question banks and past papers will help but they do vary massively paper to paper because of the amount of content. The exams are also ridiculously time pressured and this adds a lot of difficulty. Otherwise, the exams would definitely be much easier. The pass mark for BPT is 55% as it is within the Professional Level but the pass mark is 50% for CR and SBM.

Below I have ranked the exams by difficulty (1 being the hardest) but this is definitely going to be controversial. I have a feeling most people who have sat the exams will not agree with me completely. In all honestly, it is probably in order of which exam scarred me the most! I have therefore also added my mark out of 100 for context.

3a8082e126