*This post is outdated and covers the marking process for the 2015 syllabus.

This post is a build on the previous series of posts I did with regards how the CIMA scaling mark worked. If you missed those, here’s Part 1 and Part 2 again. Essentially, you will need to look at your results in twofolds. One, you need to get to an overall pass mark. Two, you need to gain at least a moderate on all skills.

But what does moderate really mean? Why does it have to be in terms of strength? Weak, moderate, strong – it makes it sound like we’re having tea with the Queen!!!

Kidding aside, how does CIMA really rate each skill? It’s all quite simple really. And it all boils down to the competency wheels of each level.

Each skill (Technical, Business, People, Leadership) will be assessed in terms of strength, and CIMA uses descriptions like weak, moderate or strong for the assessment.

Weak is when the marks tally up to just under one-third of the total marks to be gained for that skill.

Moderate is when the marks tally up between one-third to two-thirds of the total marks to be gained for that skill.

Finally, strong is when the marks tally up to over two-thirds of the total marks to be gained for that skill.

So as an example, let’s take Technical Skills on the Management Level. For simplicity’s sake, we will use the competency wheel as the set of total marks we can gain for each skill. What I mean is, if the competency wheel tells us that there is 39% for technical skills, we will take it that the total score we can get is 39 marks.

Should you only achieve a third of this, meaning you score less than 13 on technical skills, your technical skill will be classified as weak. Should your score be anywhere between 13 to 26 marks, then it will be classified as moderate. And lastly, if you score higher than 26, you will get a “strong” result.

Of course, we know that the exam itself may yield a different percentage for Technical skill (perhaps 37% instead of 39% let’s say), at which point then our “one-third, two-thirds” yardstick will move as well. One-third of 37 is 12.3 marks.

And that’s how easy it is to understand the strength of your tea….er, I mean, the strength of your skill.

>> Need more practice mocks to get a better score? Check out Astranti’s OCS Mock Exams, MCS Mock Exams, or SCS Mock Exams.