Adelaide students reveal the SACE accounting exam question that gave them the most trouble

With the pressure piling on, Year 12 students were scrambling to complete the last, and most difficult, question of the 2024 SACE accounting exam. Find out what question had them scratching their heads.

As South Australia’s future businesspeople and accountants left the testing hall following the SACE accounting exam, they were all discussing one question.

St Paul’s College in Gilles Plains students Vrushit, Liam and Sakshith agreed the toughest question of the 130-minute exam was the last one, where they had to put theory into practice.

Students had to provide advice to a fictitious prospective business owner, which involved deciding the location of their store and finding ratios with income statements and balances to see how the new company would fare.

The last question was worth 30 marks in the two-booklet test.

Vrushit, who has one exam to go after completing the mathematical methods test on Monday, said he ran out of time to finish.

“My strategy was to see what I understand and do the hard questions at the end but it was a really long exam,” the 17-year-old said.

“I think I probably got a B but if I had half an hour extra I would have had an A-plus.”
Vrushit hopes to work in IT after school.

St Paul's students who undertook the accounting exam Sakshith, 17, Liam, 18 and Vrushit: 17 Picture: RoyVPhotography

Fellow year 12 Liam, 18, believed he passed the exam but ran out of time at the end.

“It was poor time management and the last question was so long,” Liam said, who will continue studying accounting after school.

“I only answered half of it.”

His only other exam was general mathematics on Monday.

Sakshith, 17, said the exam was “what I expected”.

“There was only one question I missed out on,” he said.

Accounting was the easiest exam he has taken so far, the student said, after he completed the mathematical methods test with economics and specialist mathematics to go.

Sakshith hopes to study computer science next year.

It came after students had their final chemistry exam disrupted after they had to be notified of an error in the test paper on Wednesday morning.

SACE sent emails out to schools at 10.03am to notify students, who were midway through the chemistry test, that an error was discovered.

The exam began at 9am.

Schools were forced to pause the 130-minute test, which was about halfway through, to notify students of the error and changes to question 7a in booklet two of the exam.

The timer was restarted following the correction.