ACCA PM 2026: Half Your Section C Marks Are Words — Why 'ABB Is Costly' Scores Zero
Half the marks in a PM Section C question are for words, not numbers. And the examiner keeps failing candidates who write one-line answers. If your revision is all calculation and no explanation, you are training for half the exam.
The 10-mark split most candidates ignore
A 20-mark variance question in PM typically gives 10 marks for the calculations and 10 marks for the discussion — what the variances mean and what management should do about them. You can get every number right and still score 50%. The candidates who pass are the ones who can interpret, not just compute.
The March/June 2025 examiner report makes this brutally clear. On the activity-based budgeting question, candidates were asked to explain three difficulties of implementing ABB. A significant number wrote answers like "ABB is costly", "ABB is difficult", "ABB is time consuming". The examiner's verdict: these say nothing, and score nothing.
Answer the verb — and the right focus
"Explain" means give a reason. A bullet point or a short label is not an explanation. The same report flagged a requirement to explain why a not-for-profit needed a balanced mix of performance measures — many candidates just re-defined economy, efficiency and effectiveness instead, and got nothing.
Worse, in a question asking about the challenges of measuring performance, candidates discussed the entity's actual performance instead. Right topic, wrong focus, zero marks. In PM, read the requirement twice and answer the exact question — not the one you revised for.
Worked example: the difference is one sentence
Requirement: Explain one difficulty of implementing activity-based budgeting.
Scores zero: "ABB is costly."
Scores the mark: "Implementing ABB is expensive because the business must buy new systems and spend time identifying cost drivers and driver rates — a cost that has to be justified by a cost-benefit analysis before it is worthwhile."
Same point. The difference is the word because and the context that follows it. That is the entire skill the discussion marks reward.
What to do
1. Force a "because" into every narrative point. If a sentence has no because, so what, or therefore in it, it is a label, not an explanation. Labels score nothing.
2. Underline the verb and the object before you write. "Explain why a balanced mix is important" is not "define the 3 Es". "Challenges of measuring performance" is not "poor performance". Answer the words that are actually there.
3. Practise discussion under timed conditions, not just calculations. Do the variance numbers, then write the 10 marks of commentary against the clock. Most candidates only ever drill the maths and walk into the exam having never practised the half that fails them.
The bottom line
PM's pass rate sits around 40% — one of the toughest Applied Skills papers. It is not a knowledge gap. Candidates know the formulas; they lose because they cannot say what the numbers mean. Get the calculation right, then earn the other half. Explain, don't label.