Accounting Department makes Strides towards Transformation

The Accounting Department in the Faculty of Commerce has made significant strides towards achieving Transformation within the CA profession, if the latest results from the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA) are anything to go by.

Equity candidates prepared by UCT for the exam showed significantly better performance than their peers at other universities.

A total of 200 UCT students passed Part One of the Qualifying Examination (QE1) - up from 134 UCT graduates four years ago. The pass rate for UCT students writing the exam for the first time was 98%, with a 96% overall pass rate, compared to the 53% pass rate nationally. Of the total successful first-time writers, 14.8% were from UCT as against 12.3% in the past.

A UCT academic trainee, Julia Spurdle, was placed second in the country. She was among a group of excited trainees who gathered with Champagne bottles at the Faculty of Commerce Accounting Department when the results were posted on noticeboards during the holidays. 39 of 3902 candidates who wrote the exam were awarded honours, including nine UCT students.

Postgraduate Diploma in Accounting (PGDA) Co-ordinator Professor Alex Watson said: "We would like to congratulate all the students who passed the QE1 and are particularly proud of our 2007 PGDA throughput of 92,6% from our biggest class to date. We are also delighted with our first Thuthuka graduates, who have shown excellent throughput in both the PGDA and QE1."

Thuthuka is the accounting profession's transformation initiative which is strategically positioned to meet SAICA’s goal to transform the nation's business leadership and profession by promoting Chartered Accountancy as a first choice career amongst individuals from previously disadvantaged backgrounds and supporting such individuals through the learning process.

"Thuthuka" is a Zulu verb meaning "to develop".

UCT was one of only four Universities chosen to participate in the Thuthuka project based on the work of the Commerce Academic Development Programme (CADP) and the past successes of UCT students in the Qualifying Examination.

The UCT candidates achieved excellent results across the board. In terms of Equity figures, the first time candidate pass rate for black students was 93% for coloured students 96% and Indian students 95%, roughly double the national pass rates for these Equity groups.

At present SAICA is aiming to redress the imbalances of the past. Of the total number of professionals who hold the CA(SA) designation 973 are African, 522 Coloured, 2 065 Indian and 23 487 White.

Successful candidates still have to complete a specialist diploma, and pass either the Public Practice Exam (PPE) or the Financial Management exam after completing 18 months practical training in terms of a registered training contract. Candidates can only become full members of SAICA once they have completed their training contracts.

Students photographing their results.	UCT's top student, Julia Spurdle gets a congratulatory hug.

Posted on 18/07/2008 by Carolyn McGibbon