Strategic Level pre-seen

I rashly promised, a few days ago, that I would post something more about the Strategic Level pre-seen material. Since then, I’ve been talking to a number of tutors, and also to some of the people more closely involved in the development of the syllabus and the examination process.

Well, the prevailing view seems to be – DON’T PANIC!

After having looked again at the Specimen Papers, I’m not sure that the pre-seen material is going to figure very highly in the Strategic Level exams. The vast majority of the information that you need, to answer the questions, seems to be in the unseen material. Indeed, it seems very much as if you will be able to pass the Section A questions quite comfortably if you only use the unseen material. Obviously, there’s no reason why you would do that, as you’ve had the pre-seen material to work with for several weeks. It does, however, take the pressure off having to do lots of detailed analysis of the pre-seen material.

I go back, therefore, to the advice I gave on the 5th March – use the pre-seen material as a revision aide; as a context in which you can practise application of the various tools, models and approaches in the Strategic Level syllabus. Don’t get hung up on doing loads of industry analysis, for little return.

If you want a prediction (after all, it’s election night here in the UK), I’d suggest that your answers in Section A of the Strategic Level exams should be based about 90% on the unseen material, with only about 10% (if anything) on the pre-seen material and any industry examples.