90 people took our assessment – These are the results!

The other day I logged into our LMS (learning management system) and noticed we had 90 students who had completed our accounting knowledge assessment! Our assessment is 15 multiple choice questions, which prospective students take for free, to see if the African Accounting Academy is the right fit for them.

We’ve been so busy onboarding students and meeting potential clients and partners, that I hadn’t had a chance to sit down and digest these numbers. I was excited to crunch the numbers and see what they had to say – I am an accountant after all!

Our assessment covers the practical concepts covered in our course, including the fundamentals of accounting, drafting journal entries, and internal controls.  We designed it to provide prospective students with a point of reference to see if they are a good fit for the course. It’s also an important tool for us to collect data on our students.

We tell prospective students that if you achieve a score of 80% (12 out of 15), you likely already have good fundamental accounting knowledge and don’t need to take our course. Although it is our strong belief that even those that score 80% can benefit from our course because of the way we package the material together to make it practical and job-relevant.

So, how many people scored above 80%?

Of the 90 who took our assessment, only 6 scored 80%. To be honest, this didn’t surprise me. We have worked with over 100 accountants since we moved to Rwanda in 2017 and have a good understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of an entry-level accountant. Furthermore, if this number was higher, there wouldn’t be a need for our course!

The median score was 53%. If we consider a “fail” to be 7 or less out of 15, then 44% of students “failed” the assessment. Given our course covers entry level accounting material and is focused on preparing accountants for the workforce, we consider a “fail” to be anything less than 80%, which is 93% of students. Granted, it’s difficult to say how many people who took our assessment have a background in accounting or are prospective accountants, but through our discussions with many of the students, we can confirm that university graduates with majors in accounting have taken our assessment and even some accountants with up to 5 years’ experience are included in the data.

To give you some perspective on the questions we ask, here are a few examples:

• What is the General Ledger?
• If a company reports net profit at the end of the year, how does it impact the accounting equation?

Looking at the data more closely, there does not appear to be a big difference between people who are employed versus those that are not. Approximately 33% of those who took the assessment (30 people) stated that they are either a student or looking for work. These people averaged a score of 49%. Those that stated they are currently employed averaged 55%.

Overall, these assessment scores further confirm the hypothesis that Haystack was built on: accountants are not prepared for the workforce and there is a reason why employers struggle to hire entry-level accountants. We know the skills gap is big, but it is not insurmountable! We look forward to our first graduates finishing our program in the coming weeks and placing them in positions to show that our short training program can make a huge difference!