ACCA/ACA/CIMA Study support contract conditions

Hi. Will write some notes later. Two years seems unusually fast - how many exemptions do you have?

Thanks. I only have one exemption. I'm expecting it to take longer than two years but I've heard of people smashing through ACCA in around two years.

Hi all, I am applying and interviewing for jobs that offer study support. I understand it usually takes a minimum of 2 years.

My concern is that I’ve had a previous experience where an employer came across very well in interview, but after a few months of working there, the role and company wasn’t as great as they had made out.

If I were to accept a job with a company that pays for some of my exams etc, and then want to leave maybe 8 months later having sat a few exams, am I tied to them in anyway? What have been the conditions for this in your contracts in your experience?

Obviously my intention would be to stay there until I was fully qualified and maybe even stay there after this. I want to know this before accepting any offers but if I were to ask this at an interview it wouldn’t give a good impression.

Thanks in advance

So - things to consider.

- Never ask about specifics of repayment during an interview or until you have a job offer and contract in your hand. Just don't!

- Remember - you do not need to accept a job offer. You can try to negotiate but be aware of the risks so do this sensibly for your circumstances.

- The devil is in the detail. Lets say you have to repay all costs for two years from the time the costs are incurred. You need to have an idea of how much this might be. I've known people who purposefully saved up this amount just in case. It can be expensive but the precise terms make a lot of difference.

- You may want to consider how you spend your training allowance. For example taking one exam per quarter reduces the outstanding balance at any one time compared to signing up to 4 exams a year at the same time.

Things to be really careful about:

- I have heard of a company where people signed training contracts where they had to pay back training costs if they left within two years of the completion of the qualification. Now, thats pretty reasonable for shortish courses such as health and safety. Not so good for professional accountancy exams. It could easily take 4+ years to finish which is a long time to commit. What if you stop studying or can't pass later exams? I don't know.

- conditions that you have to repay all costs if you fail. Failure rates are high for accountancy exams unlike most workplace training schemes.

- long tie ins can be very expensive if you don't get pay rises. You could be stuck at a much lower than market rate of pay. Likewise if there are no opportunities to expand your experience. That can have long term impacts.

To somewhat offset the negativity:

- if the economy is strong other companies will take over your training costs if they want to recruit you.

- Lots of well prepared trainees keep the costs down for the first 4 or so exams by using free online resources and just buy the text books and question banks. At least that way you have time to know that the company is decent before risking a large bill.

Where I work there used to be a condition that if you left within 2 years of qualification, you could be asked to pay the support back (on a sliding scale). However now that we are using the apprenticeship levy to fund training, we don’t ask for this to be paid back. I think that is because it isn’t allowed under the terms of the levy. Perhaps this is worth checking on the govt website if it is something you are concerned about.

Then the only question you need to ask is whether the qualification utilises levy funding. This is important for other reasons as the qualification under the levy gives you additional things to complete as opposed to the normal qualification outside the levy.

Interesting, I haven’t heard of this. I’m not applying for apprenticeships though so would this levy still apply?

Interesting, I haven’t heard of this. I’m not applying for apprenticeships though so would this levy still apply?