ACCA Pass Rates December 2025 — All 15 Papers Ranked
ACCA Pass Rates December 2025: Why Numbers Papers Beat Wordy Papers
120,633 students entered the December 2025 sitting. 137,609 exams were completed. Here are the results — and the pattern inside them that most students never notice.
The full results
| Paper | Pass Rate | Type |
|---|---|---|
| BT — Business & Technology | 87% | Mixed |
| LW — Corporate and Business Law | 82% | Wordy |
| FA — Financial Accounting | 68% | Numbers |
| MA — Management Accounting | 64% | Numbers |
| TX — Taxation | 55% | Numbers |
| FR — Financial Reporting | 51% | Numbers |
| SBL — Strategic Business Leader | 50% | Wordy |
| ATX — Advanced Taxation | 50% | Numbers |
| SBR — Strategic Business Reporting | 48% | Wordy |
| FM — Financial Management | 48% | Numbers |
| AA — Audit and Assurance | 46% | Wordy |
| AFM — Advanced Financial Management | 45% | Numbers |
| APM — Advanced Performance Management | 41% | Wordy |
| PM — Performance Management | 40% | Mixed |
| AAA — Advanced Audit and Assurance | 38% | Wordy |
The pattern no one talks about
Look at the bottom of that table. AAA 38%. APM 41%. PM 40%. AA 46%.
Now look at the numbers-heavy papers at a similar level. ATX 50%. AFM 45%. FM 48%. FR 51%.
At every level of the qualification, wordy papers — the ones where you write paragraphs rather than do calculations — consistently underperform their numbers-heavy equivalents. This isn't a one-sitting anomaly. It holds across multiple years.
The question is why. Because AAA and APM are not harder topics than AFM or ATX. The syllabus difficulty is roughly comparable. And yet the pass rates are 7–12 percentage points lower.
Numbers papers have a tight feedback loop. Wordy papers don't.
When you practise an NPV calculation, you know immediately whether you got it right. The answer is either correct or it isn't. You can mark your own work accurately, identify exactly where you went wrong, and fix it. Do that 40 times and you will get better at NPV calculations. The feedback loop between practice and improvement is direct and fast.
Wordy papers don't work like that.
When you write an answer to an AAA or APM question, you have no idea if it's worth 8 marks or 14. It looks plausible to you — you've covered the points you know — but you can't tell whether you've actually answered the question asked, or whether your answer has the depth and application the examiner is looking for. You hand in your mock, feel broadly OK about it, and move on having learned very little.
The problem compounds. Students practising numbers papers discover their gaps through practice. Students practising wordy papers often don't — because they can't objectively assess the quality of what they're writing. They end up sitting the real exam with the same blind spots they had at the start of their studies.
Writing more is not the same as scoring more
The most common mistake in wordy ACCA papers is confusing coverage with quality. A student sits PM or AAA, writes four pages, covers the syllabus areas that seem relevant, and expects a decent mark. But the mark scheme isn't rewarding coverage. It's rewarding specific application to the scenario, professional judgement, and a direct response to the verb in the question.
"Evaluate" requires a different answer to "explain." "Advise" is not the same as "describe." Students who treat all question verbs as an invitation to write what they know about the topic will consistently fall short on wordy papers — even when they know the content well. This matters more at Strategic Professional level, where almost every question requires judgement and application rather than recall.
This is why AAA and APM sit where they do. The gap between what students think a good answer looks like and what actually scores marks is widest in the written papers — and hardest to close without external feedback.
LW is the exception that proves the rule
One paper disrupts the pattern: LW at 82%. It's a wordy paper — essay and scenario-based answers — yet it has the second-highest pass rate in the qualification. The difference is that LW questions have relatively clear right answers. The law either applies or it doesn't. There's less judgement involved, which means students can self-assess more accurately, even without a marker. It sits closer to a numbers paper in terms of feedback loop than it does to AAA.
What this means if you're sitting in March or June 2026
If you're sitting a numbers paper — TX, FR, FM, AFM, ATX — your path is clear. Do more questions, mark them yourself, find the gaps. The pass rates reflect the fact that this approach works.
If you're sitting a wordy paper — AA, PM, SBL, SBR, APM, AAA — self-study alone has a ceiling. You need your written answers marked, with specific feedback on where marks are being lost. Reading model answers tells you what a good answer looks like. Getting your own answer marked tells you what yours is missing. Those are very different things.
aCOWtancy is an ACCA Platinum Approved Learning Partner. Our Ultra marking is available for AA, PM, FR, TX, FM, SBL, SBR, AFM, APM, ATX and AAA — your written answers marked with individual feedback, so you stop practising the same mistakes.