Accountancy exams (ICAEW ACA) & parenting

[AwkwardPaws27]

Has anyone trained as an accountant alongside raising a small child(ren), & do you have any tips for me?

I'm on mat leave, returning to work soon & will be going back 4 days per week (80% of full-time). I started my ICAEW ACA before I was pregnant but only did two exams (bit of a tricky pregnancy after 3 previous MCs, so with agreement of my manager I didn't do any exams during it so as not to add to stress levels).

I'm struggling to work out how I'm going to fit in study time (and make sure it is effective, quality time - not plagued by mum guilt or unable to focus due to lack of sleep!) with a 1yo.

I did my degree over 4 years in the evenings, while working full-time during the day, & that was hard but doable, but parenting is just so constant that I'm panicking a bit.

Work have been quite supportive (public sector) but have asked that I pass 7 exams within 12 months of returning from mat leave (4 certificate level & 3 professional level). DH also has some significant work-related exams to take in the next 6-12 months so can't drop everything to support me.

Any tips gratefully received!

Is that normal pace for your area of the public sector? When I did exams at big 4 we did 6 cert and 3 prof was the norm for one year, but that was pretty fast paced and no one was trying to do it with a baby in tow.

Which certificate level ones have you passed?

I think I would try and get the rest those out of the way as quickly as possible and then split the professional level ones 2 and 1, so you don't have to do all three at once.

Depending, you could try and do some of the more chilled prof level ones first, but that probably depends what sort of person you are. I found A&A, BS and FM pretty relaxed, TC required learning but pretty fine, FAR more effort, and BPT was really seriously hard work.

I'm afraid I can't give advice on having a baby while studying for them.

Will you get study leave/would your manager be amenable to you building up and using flexitime to study? Feels like that and/or you and your husband religiously splitting e.g. 2 evenings a week where the other one does EVERYTHING - cooking, cleaning up, baby -each is going to be the only way.

I had professional exams (not accountancy) to sit in a similar situation - had an 18 month old, a job and a husband in a high pressure job who was not in a position to support me due to the demands of his career/various tedious logistical factors associated with his job (ie he wasn't being a dick, he geniunely couldn't help)

Not going to lie, it wasn't easy, but I realised how suboptimally I worked pre children.

Firstly, I began to utilise any 'pocket of time' that came my way. Whereas before revision needed a whole afternoon for it, I started grabbing ten minute power sessions when the opportunity arose.

Associated with this, I was very organised in having a plan of what I needed to cover, and resources to cover small topics easily assessible.

I also begged my mum/childless friends/neighbours to have my toddler for an hour here or there, and I felt so grateful to them for giving up the time I worked far harder and with greater focus than I previously would have.

Good luck - you've already done a degree in the evening, I feel sure you've got this too.

@Augend23 our usual pace is up to 1 year for certificate, then 12-18 months for Prof level. I've passed Accounting & Assurance (cert level).

Thanks for the tip on which Prof level ones might be more straightforward!

Our study leave policy is a bit vague, & my manager isn't that helpful (& was quite adverse to me dropping to 80%) so I'm not sure how forthcoming that will be. I will try though.

I think that having ringfenced days each is a good idea too, thank you. I'm not sure how focused I'll be though; my brain seems to have turned to mush.

I'm also thinking it's probably better to keep DS in childcare longer on the days I'm WFH to use that time to study, rather than picking up earlier those days (there's that guilt again!).

Yes, definitely getting the time in before your little one is back.

I do think with the exams it depends on the sort of person you are academically. They don't do negative marking, so if you write the points on the mark scheme you get the marks. So e.g. for BS I think I splurged out 35 sides of A4 in a 2.5 hour exam and got almost 90% simply by virtue of having written everything there was to be written and therefore hitting almost every marking point, whereas that just isn't viable with FAR.

The points above about taking babysitting wherever you can is a good one, and actually I reckon the certificate exams would suit being done in tiny chunks here and there quite well. I don't think I ever did more than maybe 2 days work in total per certificate exam (excluding accounting at the beginning).

Are you getting study time during working hours? I think you can make it work if you have some time during the week when you have childcare and are not working to focus on the exams otherwise it will be very challenging.

Unfortunately not; our study leave policy is 1 day per exam (to be used the day of the exam - so if I do an afternoon exam I can study in the morning).
We get two days for the advanced level exams.

I'm hoping they'll agree to me WFH 2 or 3 days a week, as my commute is 1hr15m each way (on a good day) so if I can WFH that's a significant chunk of potential study time.

Not quite the same but I've had to withdraw from an apprenticeship due to 'life' and children who are teenagers but ASD. I work full time too. I wish you all the best but its going to be very very hard especially with a 1 year old and DH also doing similar. Just make sure you find time for you as well.

If you can afford to I would be getting child care for at least half a day on your non-work day and use that for study. Smash the exams out asap.

If you child is a good sleeper in the evening you should be able to do a few hours then. I regularly worked 7-10pm ish when I went back to work. It was the only guaranteed 3 hours of sleep they did for years!

The usual pathway is certificate then AA & FAR, TC & FM, BPT & BST. However, if you need to get 3 prof done, you may wish to do AA, FAR then BST given that you're public sector.

How are you planning to study if your employer won't give you any time off? I assume you're not on an apprenticeship as your employer would have to give you study leave during the working week. The most appropriate options are either an On Demand course with tutorials, feedback on progress tests & mocks and tutor support. Alternatively you could study live on line evening classes. A typical AA course would be 5 evenings for tuition & 5 for revision over a couple of months.

If you would like any more advice please PM me.

Typical study leave for Advanced papers is 10 days for case study plus the exam day & 7 orb8 each for CR & SBM. Why is your employer putting you through ACA if they're unwilling to support you? ACCA or CIMA would be the usual more flexible route if they're unwilling to give you study leave.

I’m really surprised how little study leave you get from your employer. I sat my exams in the late 90s so the structure was very different to now. We had to sit (and pass) all exams for that level at the same time (between 4-6 papers) but we spent the five weeks prior to exams at a financial training centre full time.

I did train with one person that had a young child and she did find it very tough. You’ll need to have a very strict routine so keeping children in childcare to study, studying once they’re in bed and some time at the weekend. You’ll also need to think about times you’re likely to be busy at work and if you’ll need to work overtime as that’ll eat into your hours available to study. Would your employer give you some unpaid time off to study?

I studied for my CIMA exams from when my kids were 3 & 7, finishing when they were 6 & 10. I also had to go back to full time hours early on through my studies so it was pretty tough.

I found that live online training worked best for me as I could see the kids before settling down for the online lessons and my husband would bring them in to quickly say goodnight during the lesson. I tended to fill my lesson-free evenings with my own studies and homework.

Ultimately the key to my success was the support I had from DH. He would ensure the kids were entertained away from where I was studying and took them out at the weekend so I could have a few more hours to study. I needed to be consistent in the hours I devoted to studying so I didn’t fall behind.

I’d try and outsource anything I could in order to maximise time with study and baby, cleaning, ironing, get easy cook dinners etc etc.

I would definitely not ask your employer to wfh because of your commute. That will go down like a lead balloon. It would at my organisation which is public sector and accountancy related.

I would come to an arrangement though to enable you to study. We offer contract variations so for example you could work 3 days for a couple of months and five for another couple. This wouldn't impact your income but may give you some time to study.

Maybe also speak to someone who isn't your direct line manager to get some advice of what happens specifically in your workplace and how to play it.

I managed it with two kids and a horse to keep fit, plus ADHD so it’s not that bad, you just have to get on with it! I did have a smaller house and fewer pets back then though.

But this just shows all workplaces are different. WFH a couple of days a week to free up some time to study would be totally acceptable at my work place, especially as we know we should give more study leave than we do really. I'm embarrassed by our study leave policy frankly but I haven't put my mind to getting it changed as it hasn't impacted any of my team (poor but true). When I studied I was given 10 days study leave per professional level exam and 1.5 (1 for studying and 0.5 for the exam) for certificate level, so I do feel like we should do a lot more.

At certificate level you should allow:

Principles of tax & Management Info = 4 days each
BTF & Law = 3 days each.

Sorry I've been really unclear! Posting with one hand (& half a brain) while BFing.

I get study leave for courses too - in person or Live Online - & DH will have to do everything on those dates as they are usually full days + a couple of hours homework in the evening. I did one in first trimester and fell asleep after the day session, missed the homework that night & fell so behind, so I have to make sure that I'm able to keep up.

It's more the revision/exam prep. And that I feel like I've lost half my braincells.

I've spoken to DH about alternating evenings & he's adding his course & exam dates to our shared calendar so I can avoid clashes.

DS is going to go to childcare at 7.30am, and have breakfast there, so I should be able to shoehorn in a good hour of study on WFH days.

DH usually takes him to a playgroup that runs on fortnightly Saturdays so that's another two hours; I'll see if he can do something else when its not running to make that time weekly.

"Time for me" - I had a dentist appointment & it felt like a nice break, does that count

Dentist - yes as they would have been asking about your holidays whilst trying to use a water spray!

Just coming back to update. I was due to start back at work just under 2 weeks ago but they hadn't found me a team to join so I'm actually starting properly on Monday instead.

I was hoping to get two certificate level exams done in the interim period but I've only managed one (BTF, which I did pass). It took me a lot longer than 3 days to cover all the material, work through the question bank & do the mock exams - 6.5 days, working 8am-4pm, plus a couple of hours each evening once DS was in bed & at the weekend.

DS has been settling in to childcare but it's been hard - he gets very upset from about 4pm so we're currently doing 7.30am-4.15pm, with the aim to try and increase that by 15 mins a day next week.

I'm hoping I'll get quicker as I get back into learning - I've always picked things up quite quickly so it's been frustrating how slowly I seem to be processing and absorbing this.

I have OnDemand access to the Law certificate course, so plan to start studying that in smaller chunks around work as I settle in, & then I'll probably use some of my accrued leave to book time off so I can study while DS is in childcare too.

I think getting back into studying when you have been out for a while is really hard. I have recently done an additional professional course and it was really hard to get my head back into studying mode as I haven't had to for around 5 years.

Fingers crossed you'll be back into the swing of things soon.

Hello, I've just found this thread and wanted to say that I'm in a similar situation. I started when my son was 2 so a bit older but he didn't sleep until he was over 3 so probably as hard work as a 1 year old!

Getting though the exams is definitely tough. I've just done the first year so 6 certificate and 2 professional. I found it really stressful doing 2 professional ones at once so I'm going to do one every 3 months instead of 2 every 6 months now. It means I won't get the gaps that I'd get if I did two together but I think I'll find it much more manageable and less pressured. Would this be something your work would support you doing? You get through them in the same amount of time, just more spread out.

It sounds like you might be studying with Kaplan? If so their revision courses for the professional exams are great and will help you a lot!

Is there anyone else at work who has done the exams with kids? I have a few people at my work who have got through the exams with children and it helps me so much knowing that it is possible.

I write notes and then carry the notebook round with me to fill any pocket of time I have with reading them. Commuting on the train is a great time to just do a little bit of revision and doing a little bit every day really does help to cement the knowledge.

Good luck with it all - I hope you've passed your exams if you've taken any more since you last posted!

@rebld I'm still trying to study for the law exam but starting the new role has been really busy + DS isn't coping that well with long days in childcare. He's doing 7.30am-5pm, DH takes him & I'm grabbing an extra hour sleep then walking the dog before starting work as I'm still up at least 2-3 times a night. I had planned to leave him in childcare til 6pm & study but it's not happening as he's upset from around 4.30pm & wants me.

Bedtime routine takes a while & then I'm stuck until he's deeply asleep (or he wakes back up) so I finally get out of DSs bedroom at about 8.30pm, at which point I'm almost asleep myself & I end up just sitting on the sofa rather than studying. Throw in 30 minutes of pelvic floor exercises and suddenly it's my bedtime.

Something has got to give, probably sleep, but I'm really rubbish without it.

And now I just feel like I'm making a load of excuses.
My mental health is not great at the moment. I could really do with a few extra hours in the day.

I don't think you can learn without enough sleep though - nothing will stay in your brain.

I think there's a difference between excuses and reasons, and those sound like reasons to me.

I don't have any answers, it sounds like a really hard situation. I think I would be tempted to try and blast through the certificate level papers by taking a day or so of annual leave on e.g. a monday, study Sunday and Monday and then just do the exam Tuesday morning.

Would that be viable? It doesn't fix the need to get through the professional level exams but you might feel better once you have certificate level out the way?

I'm definitely a crammer though, so that might be changing my perspective.