UNIVERSITY OF MALTA
SECONDARY EDUCATION CERTIFICATE
SEC
ACCOUNTING
May 2010
EXAMINERS’ REPORT
MATRICULATION AND SECONDARY EDUCATION
CERTIFICATE EXAMINATIONS BOARD
INTRODUCTION
This year was more eventful than the previous one with a change in the syllabus and
other occurrences. Yet the overall performance shows an improvement of 2%
candidate success. The total of candidates who took the examination increased
slightly from 943 to 977. Of these, 93 failed to turn up for the examination, three less
than last year. Only three candidates turned up for paper 1 but failed to sit for paper 2
as against ten last year
STATISTICS
Table 1: Candidates’ grades in SEC Accounting May 2010
Grades
No. of
candidates:Option A
Option B
1
2
3
4
5
6
-
7
-
U
Absent
TOTAL
47
-
111
-
128
-
109
62
79
27
42
37
123
119
36
57
633
344
Of the remaining candidates, 242 obtained a grade U as against 254 last year. 47
candidates obtained Grade 1, six more than last year and 111 obtained grade 2, four
more than last year. The results for grade 3 show an improvement of 15, from 113 to
128, and for grade 4 results improved by seven to 171. The number of candidates
obtaining grade 5 fell slightly from 111 to 106, but for grade 6 rose from 25 last year
to 42 this year. Grade 7 rose by ten from 27 to 37. Thus, overall performance was
definitely better than previous years.
Paper 1
This paper contained a major innovation in that the first question was multiple-choice
instead of the usual structured question. Only five candidates did not attempt to
answer it out of all those who sat for the examination. To all the others it did not
present any undue difficulties although, unfortunately, a good number of students
were not aware of this change. Overall, answers to questions two and three gained
students more marks than answers for questions four and five.
Paper 2A
The innovation in this paper was that the candidates had to answer one question less
but candidates still had the same time available. This meant that the other questions
set had to be slightly more demanding to make up. Even so candidates fared well and
a small number of these managed to get nearly full marks for the first two questions.
In fact this is reflected in the increase in number of students obtaining grades 1, 2 and
3.
Paper 2B
The same innovation was introduced in this paper where candidates answered one
question less. Candidates attempting question 2 were appropriately rewarded for the
missing figure. The answer to question five proved to present the greatest difficulty
gaining candidates only an average of 1.26 marks in contrast to 9.10 for question 1
and 8.77 for question 2. Ten students obtained full marks for their answer to question
1 and nearly half the candidates obtained more than 60% of the mark for their answer
to question 2.
CONCLUSION
Overall, the answers presented by the candidates display the usual patterns in that
students prefer to answer questions relating to final accounts that require the use of
memory rather than the ones that require creative approaches. Most expect to
memorise a definite pattern that can be repeated rather than take a different approach.
Chairperson
Examiners’ Panel