ACCA
ACCA mixes two shapes, and which one you face shifts as you move through the qualification. At Applied Knowledge and Applied Skills, you open with objective and short case-based items that pay for the right answer and cost nothing when you get one wrong — work them at speed, and never leave one blank.
The written items after that, and every Strategic Professional paper, are marked point by point against a published scheme, so name the point the scheme wants rather than writing around it. Because the objective share never costs you marks, the arithmetic that argues for skipping a hard item elsewhere doesn’t apply to you here. Check the box below for the pass mark; the exact split is one of the things you confirm there.
ACCA sets one common paper for the whole world, offered several times a year, so you choose which sitting to attempt each paper in rather than facing one fixed date. Run the qualification as one season, with a fresh target set paper by paper, not one number for the whole thing.
ACCA schedules and marks its own papers on its own current notice, so read that notice again before you enter each sitting — the objective share and the pass mark for the paper in front of you are both in the box below.
Open a past Applied Skills paper. Time yourself on the objective section first, answering every item. Then write one scenario-based answer from the written section against the clock, and mark it point by point against the current scheme rather than by how complete it reads.
Leaving a hard objective question blank feels safer than risking a wrong guess.
That instinct is borrowed from a penalised exam. ACCA costs nothing for a wrong pick on its objective sections, so a blank answer throws away marks a guess could still have earned. Answer every one of them, even a rushed best guess, and spend your careful time on the written share instead, where a page without the scheme’s named point genuinely earns nothing.
ACCA: check the current notice
As read on 14 September 2026 on ACCA’s own site, accaglobal.com. The box holds the numbers; ACCA changes them, the shape does not. Confirm in the current notice: the exact duration of each paper, and the split of marks between the objective and scenario-based sections of each Applied Skills paper. Also confirm the current session dates and entry deadlines for the paper and sitting you plan to take.