Is there negative marking in CA Foundation?

Introduction

CA Foundation is the first step of the charted accountancy course, I know you are excited to be part of the course and at the same time worried about the examination methodology. So here we are to help you out in this aspect.

Topics to covered in the blog:

• Overview of CA Foundation examination
• Passing criteria for CA Foundation examination
• Negative marking methodology
• How to take advantage of negative marking?
• Negative marking under proposed scheme of education and training
• Conclusion

Overview of CA foundation examination:

Institute of Charted Accountants of India has a non-standing committee namely, Board of studies (BoS) whose functions ranges from preparing curriculum for charted accountancy course to conducting the examination and creating world class professionals. CA course consists of three levels of out of which foundation is the going to be the outset for the fantastic journey ahead. BoS has planned foundation course in such a way that it gives student a sturdy foundation for the upcoming levels namely Intermediate and Final level.

Foundation examination consists of 4 Papers:

In the above given 4 papers, paper-1 and 2 are going to be descriptive whereas 3 and 4 are going to be objective.

Passing criteria for CA Foundation examination:

The skill assessment schema mentioned in course prospectus states that at foundation level examination focuses more on evaluating your skill to apply the knowledge you gained rather than assessing your comprehension skills.

Each paper will be for one hundred marks which totals to four hundred marks for the whole examination. There are two criterias that you need satisfy to qualify this examination which are:

1. Forty percent rule: To satisfy this criterion you need to score minimum of 40 marks in each paper

1. Fifty percent rule: Aggregate marks obtained from all four papers should exceed 200 marks.

These criterions are quite uncomforting but remember as I mentioned before Institute wants to assess your ability of understanding and practical application of knowledge you gained.

The good news is that if you are not able to satisfy any one of the criteria but scored above 60 marks in any of the paper you will be given an exemption for the same.

Negative marking methodology

Yes, there is negative marking for paper 3 & 4 namely, “Business Mathematics, Logical Reasoning and Statistics” & “Business Economics and Business and Commercial Knowledge” which will be in objective mode.

Paper 3 & 4 will be having one hundred multiple choice questions each and 2 hours of time for each paper.

Essentially, you have 4 options for each question out of which you need to select one correct option for which you will score one mark but if the option selected is wrong then 0.25 mark will be deducted for each wrong answer.

How to take advantage of negative marking

You already got to know about marking pattern in foundation examination and in this section, we would try to explain how you can leverage this marking pattern. Intrinsically, you have 4 options in front of you out of which only one is right. You should have in-depth understanding of concept to answer these questions and I would suggest practicing all objective questions given in institutes modules and RTPs and MPTs hosted in institutes website.

Coming back to exam situation you can classify the questions given in to three categories and use the rule assigned to each category for answering the questions. The classification of questions varies from person to person.

• 100% confident answer: This type consists of questions that you have already aware of and you are so confident about the answer for it then just mark the answer in OMR.

• 0% confident answer: I am making a caution notice for all of you that in examination you will encounter some questions which will take away your confidence and the golden rule is to leave these questions without attempting.

• Partially confident answers: Most of the examination questions fall in this category and the rule for this would be answer the question rather than not attempting as if its wrong you will be only losing 0.25mark but if your answer is right, you will gain a mark. But ensure that you wont end up attempting all these questions because it may also cause backlash by which you may lose marks gained in you 100% confident category.

Its your responsibility to move most of the examination questions from the partially confident answer category to 100% confident answers category. This can be only possible by preparation and practice.

Negative marking under proposed scheme of education and training

The draft of proposed scheme of education and training has been notified by institute on its website (Link for notification: https://resource.cdn.icai.org/70622council56556.pdf ) on 3rd June 2022 after getting approval from Ministry of Corporate Affairs. The proposed scheme had made considerable changes in foundation syllabus by removing “Business Correspondence and Reporting” and “Business and Commercial Knowledge” from paper 2 and paper 4 respectively.

The new notified syllabus is as follows:

Highlights of proposed scheme:

• Instead of Business Correspondence and Reporting been treated as a subject it will be launched as a recommendatory online course
• The 100 marks paper of Business Economics will also include the topics from Economics for finance from CA Intermediate course
• Validity of registration is increased from 3 to 4 years, but revalidation is not allowed.
• Single passing criteria of minimum 50% marks to be obtained in each subject.

And coming back to the original question the proposed scheme also has negative marking pattern by deducting 0.25 for each wrong answer in paper 3 and 4.

Conclusion

We hope your query on negative making pattern in CA Foundation exams has been addressed and to conclude there will be negative marking in only in paper 3 & 4. Both above-mentioned papers are for 100 marks each and there will be 100 MCQs for each correct answer marked you will be getting 1 mark and for wrong answer 0.25 mark will be deducted.

All the best.