ACCA Study Group: How to Find One Across Time Zones

An ACCA study group works when its members sit the same exam in the same session and can share one hour a week across their time zones. Find them on OpenTuition, at work or on StudyDuo. Then split the work by question type: objective tests drilled alone, written answers swapped and marked against ACCA's published ones.

ACCA's exams as of November 2026

ACCA runs "four exam sessions a year in March, June, September and December" (important dates), each over five days (exam sessions). The Applied Knowledge exams are booked on demand, as are some variants of Corporate and Business Law. The pass mark is 50% in every exam, and the formats below are from ACCA's FR syllabus and study guide for September 2026 to June 2027:

Take FR as an example. Section A is 15 objective test questions of 2 marks each, and Section B is three cases of five such questions. Section C is two 20-mark constructed response questions.

The calendar is about to change. ACCA's timeline makes June 2027 the final sitting of the current Applied Skills and Strategic Professional exams. The new Expertise and Strategic Professional exams start in September 2027, and the new Foundations and Knowledge exams go on demand in July 2027. That leaves three sessions on today's exams: December 2026, March 2027 and June 2027. Everyone in a group should sit on the same side of that line.

Pass rates in June and September 2026

ACCA publishes pass rates after each session. These are the seven exams most students sit in sessions, from its June and September 2026 releases:

The four options ranged from 39% to 53% across the two sessions. The June figures for the on-demand exams were higher: 65% to 89% in Applied Knowledge and 82% in LW. So a group earns its time from Applied Skills on, where about half the candidates fail each sitting.

Where to find an ACCA study group

• OpenTuition. Its ACCA Forums held 26,430 topics on November 13, 2026, and the latest post was two hours old (forums). Its Study Buddy board works as a notice board for finding an ACCA study partner. You list your exam, session and format (online or face-to-face), then message people; it's free with an account, and your email isn't shown.
• Your employer or tuition class. Ask colleagues on your training scheme, or classmates on your course, which exam and session they've entered for.
• StudyDuo. Its Find Partners search has ACCA among the exams. Add a country or city to see people in or near your time zone, then follow or message them.

Post the exam, the session and your hour in one line: "SBR, March 2027, Karachi, Saturdays 3 p.m. local". If the group moves to WhatsApp or Telegram, wait until you've studied together before sharing a phone number, and keep your myACCA login to yourself. Our safety checklist for online study rooms covers the rest.

One hour across time zones

ACCA counts members and future members in 179 countries, so a group found online can span eight hours of time difference. Here is one London hour in each city, before and after UK clocks go forward on March 28, 2027:

Weekday evenings can work from London to Nairobi, or from Karachi to Kuala Lumpur, but not across both. A Saturday morning in the UK reaches all six cities in daylight, and none of them changes its clocks. From March 28 the same London hour comes an hour earlier everywhere else, so a June 2027 group should agree which clock its hour follows.

What to do together: objective tests and written answers

ACCA tests two kinds of skill, so an ACCA study group needs two kinds of session.

Objective test questions (Applied Knowledge, LW, and Sections A and B of Applied Skills). Drill them alone and timed. Together, write questions for each other: each member brings five in the exam's style, with the answer and a reason each wrong option is wrong. Mirjam Ebersbach and colleagues tested this in a university lecture (Applied Cognitive Psychology, 2020). A week later, students who had generated questions recalled the material as well as students who had answered practice questions, and both groups beat restudying.

Written answers (Section C of Applied Skills, all of Strategic Professional). Write them alone at exam pace, then swap and mark. The pace is simple division: an Applied Skills exam gives 1.8 minutes a mark, a Strategic Professional exam 1.95. ACCA's examiners recommend exactly this: "By translating each mark into minutes, candidates can plan how long to spend answering each part of each question."

Mark against ACCA's answers, then read the examiner's report

ACCA's SBR examiner's report for March and June 2026 tells candidates to practise on the ACCA Practice Platform and review "the published answers alongside this report". That gives a group its marking routine:

1. Mark against the published answer, point by point, and write each subtotal in the margin.
2. Check the clock. The report says candidates "often spend too long" on Question 1 and run out of time later. Note where the writer went over their minutes.
3. Check the user. Professional skills marks reward "addressing the specified user group in the requirement", so an answer for investors that talks about employees loses them.
4. Check the workings. A spreadsheet answer should be "easy to follow and mark", without "unreferenced numbers" typed into formulas.
5. Read the examiner's report together after both of you have marked, and compare it with your margins.

A marking scheme is a rubric, and rubrics have been tested. Ernesto Panadero and colleagues pooled 21 studies in a 2023 meta-analysis (Educational Psychology Review). Using rubrics raised academic performance by g = 0.45 after a correction for publication bias. The effects on self-regulated learning (g = 0.23, five studies) and self-efficacy (g = 0.18, three studies) were small and uncertain. So expect better answers, not more confidence.

For SBL, the group gets a head start: ACCA releases the pre-seen information two weeks before the exam. Split it by member (the industry, the company's numbers, its people and risks), and spend one session briefing each other.

A calendar to June 2027

The March session runs only limited variants, and all of them return in June. If you sit a national variant, such as your country's TX, check that March offers it before the group plans around that session.

When to split

• A member moves past June 2027. From September 2027 they sit new exams; ACCA says existing passes will be recognised, but you'll no longer share papers.
• A member's passes run ahead of yours. Keep them as a marker for the exam you still share, if they want.
• Nobody writes between meetings. An ACCA study group that only talks through answers isn't marking anything.

How small groups write and mark papers is covered in our CA study group guide. For the silent hours, an online study group gives you people around without anyone talking, and How to Find a Study Partner covers asking someone new.

Taking CIMA instead? A CIMA study group is organized around each case study pre-seen.