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Don't Sweat the Specs!
A Clear and Easy Guide to the Qualification
Essential documents that detail what is included in your qualification.
AAT specifications are lengthy, formal documents which are not light bedtime reading. Therefore, this is a summary of their format and content, to encourage you to take advantage of them as they are invaluable and underused resources.
Content of each qualification specification
Most of the initial content is generic covering topics that:
- introduce AAT as an organisation, for members and as a qualification awarding body
- discuss ethics and expected ethical standards
- outline the practicalities of student registration and support
Then the specifications start to become qualification specific, explaining who should undertake the qualification, why it should be chosen and listing the units covered. If appropriate, a distinction between mandatory and optional units is made. This section concludes with examples of the kind of career opportunities gaining the qualification can open up, as well as indicating how it can be undertaken by those on an apprenticeship programme.
The specifications state:
The main content - units
Whilst the generic information is interesting, it is only likely to be so once. The unit details, by contrast, are the content that will attract regular referencing.
There is an introduction to the units section, which explains the layout applied to each unit in turn. It also defines some key terms for example, the learning outcomes (LO). These state what students are expected to know or be able to do, as a result of completing the unit. There are both ‘understanding’ and ‘skills’ criteria, the first is generally theory or fact based and the later practical. In effect, the LO are the skeleton of each unit which is then fleshed out in full via topics and concepts to provide the syllabus. The following example is from the Level 3 Diploma in Accounting:
Using the Specifications to successfully pass exams
Knowing what is within each unit is obviously key to successfully passing assessments. However, it is also important to be aware of the relationship between content and assessments. The specifications state that students must have the opportunity to cover all the unit content but that it will not all be assessed. This is because whilst all unit content will be included in AAT’s bank of live assessments, it will not all be assessed in each exam.
At the end of each unit, there is delivery advice plus a breakdown of how the LO are weighted. The following example is from the Level 2 Certificate in Accounting:
As you can see LO2 has a more significant weighting than LO4 so there will be more questions assessing LO2, and/or they will be worth more marks, than those assessing LO4.
Sections 13 - 15
The final sections deal with delivery, equality and diversity and support for training providers.
Key takeaway
AAT specifications contain hidden gems of knowledge that you can use to your advantage, with regards to knowing what you need to learn and how you will be assessed, in order to successfully gain each AAT qualification.
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