Part (c) for 12 marks required an identification and explanation of six elements of the draft audit report provided which required amendment. Candidates’ performance was mixed on this question.

Reviewing a draft audit report and identifying areas that require amendment was a different style of audit report question than in previous diets. However, many candidates answered this question satisfactorily. These recognised that there were two parts to the requirement, a need to identify the element from the scenario and then a need to explain why this sentence needed amending.

Those candidates who scored well also tended to use a two column approach of identify and explain. This resulted in them maximising their marks as they easily identified six elements from the scenario and then for each explained why there was a problem.

Those candidates who did not score as well tended to ignore the “identify” requirement and jumped straight into the explanation. This is not what the question wanted as there were clearly two requirements “identify” and “explain” and both needed to be addressed to score well. In addition many candidates focused on redrafting the audit report extracts even though this was specifically excluded from the question requirement.

In this question it was also common to see many more than six points being provided. All points made are reviewed but marks are only allocated to the six best points. Candidates would do better if they focused on the quality of points made rather than the quantity.