Before adding teaching hours, check where students actually struggle

You could add another revenue-recognition session next term. Or you could first inspect what students have already been taught, practised and asked to explain. When performance on a professional-exam topic is disappointing, what would justify the extra teaching time?

Consider a hypothetical accounting programme. Revenue recognition appears in two module descriptions, but students perform poorly on a question asking them to explain when revenue should be recognised. The difficulty is visible in responses to that question, not inferred from a whole-module average. The task requires an explanation of recognition timing, rather than simply a calculation.

Naming the topic twice does not establish how thoroughly students encountered that reasoning. Weak answers do not establish that teaching time was insufficient or that the question was defective. The discrepancy gives the course leader something to investigate, not a verdict on what to change.

Start with the reasoning students were asked to show

A possible starting point is a focused discussion between the two module teachers. Put the recognition question, its marking guidance and a selection of student responses alongside the relevant explanations, examples and practice tasks from both modules.

Each record answers a different question. Module descriptions show what is documented as included. Teaching and practice materials help establish what that inclusion involved. Responses show what students did when faced with the particular assessment demand. A topic name, a teaching example and a weak answer are not interchangeable evidence.

For this review, the teachers could ask whether students practised explaining recognition timing or mostly calculated amounts after the accounting treatment had been supplied. Did the second module develop the reasoning introduced in the first, repeat it or assume it was already understood? These are possibilities to check, not explanations to adopt in advance.

Then read the answers against what the question required. Did a student give a conclusion without supporting it, or offer an explanation that applied a principle incorrectly? Those are different difficulties to investigate. A question mark locates disappointing performance; the response gives the teachers something more specific to inspect. A whole-module average cannot reliably make that distinction.

This is not a proposal to make the task easier by removing the explanation. It is a proposal to examine where students encountered and practised the reasoning they were expected to show.

What can another record add?

External examination results may add useful context, but only at the level of detail they provide. An overall professional-exam result cannot confirm a revenue-recognition weakness simply because local answers on that topic are disappointing.

An attempt to compare these kinds of records comes from Layal Jambi and Saeed Kabrah. They looked back at curriculum documents, course marks and national licensure examination outcomes from one radiological sciences programme at King Saud University in Saudi Arabia. They mapped documented provision against the examination’s topic outline and considered local and external performance alongside it.

These were different records from the same programme, not independent tests of an explanation. No accounting programme or change to teaching was studied. The authors proposed a way to identify curriculum priorities, but did not test whether it produced better decisions, reduced review workload or improved learning. It offers an investigative possibility, not a validated rule for allocating hours.

Their treatment of computed tomography, or CT, shows why the distinction matters. The authors identify CT as their strongest combined signal of concern and describe overall licensure outcomes as supporting it. Yet those external results contain no topic-level or question-level performance information. They cannot show whether CT examination questions were the problem.

The timing also needs clarification. The article links declining CT course marks with poorer examination outcomes in 2024, but its graph places the sharpest course decline in 2025. External performance improved that year while the displayed CT course marks reached their low point. Individual course-completion and examination dates are not linked, so the records cannot establish that the relevant graduates experienced the displayed decline before their examination.

The external results cover only three years. Differences in cohort preparation, assessment format, examination content or marking could also affect the pattern. Changing course averages do not establish that the same students lost understanding, and these records neither explain the cause nor predict future topic-specific failure. Correcting the dates would still not supply CT-specific examination evidence.

For the accounting course leader, the practical distinction is between context and confirmation. Before using external results, establish whether they identify the relevant topic, students and examination period or only an overall outcome. Qualification routes and access to results vary. A result that cannot answer the topic question may still provide context, but should not be made to confirm a diagnosis.

Choose the investigation before the remedy

Back in the hypothetical programme, the teachers’ discussion could lead in several directions. If practice mostly required calculations while assessment required a reasoned conclusion, they would have a specific mismatch to examine. If explanations and relevant practice were already substantial, they would need to investigate further rather than assume that repetition would help. If provision proved thin, additional teaching might be justified.

None of those possibilities is settled by the weak responses, and the study does not establish which remedy would work. Different records may disagree; each needs checking rather than being pressed into one reassuring account.

More teaching remains an option, alongside changes to explanation, practice, feedback or assessment. The proposed review makes the allocation question more specific: before deciding how many more hours revenue recognition should receive, ask which part of the required reasoning remains unexplained. If you do add another hour, what exactly should students be asked to think through in it?