thesis for oxford brookes acca

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Overview of all 20 topics for RAP of OBU

Overview of all 20 topics for ACCA students for Research and Analysis Project (RAP) of Oxford Brookes University (OBU)

ACCA eligible students (click here to check eligibility criteria for availing BSc. Hons in Applied Accounting Degree based on ACCA) who wishes to submit a Research and Analysis Project (RAP) to the Oxford Brookes University (OBU) is required to select one of the twenty proposed topics and base the RAP only one topic without changing title of the topic.

Click here for detailed guidance for each topic.

Students should choose topic keeping in consideration of their interest for respective area. Broad categories of all twenty topics are as follows;

Financial Report (topic 3, 4,5,7,8,12)

3. An assessment of the potential impact of an aspect of impending legislation on the operations and financial position of an organisation.

4. Analyse and evaluate the business and financial performance of an organisation which has performed exceptionally poorly over a three-year period with a critical analysis of the reasons for its difficulties.

5. Analyse and evaluate the business and financial performance of an organisation which has performed exceptionally well over a three-year period with a critical analysis of the reasons for its success.

7. A critical evaluation of the restructuring of an organisation’s operational activities and the effect on the organisation’s financial performance.

8. Analyse and evaluate the business and financial performance over a three year period of an organisation operating in a sector that has faced strategic and operational challenges with an emphasis on how management have addressed these challenges.

12. An investigation into the possible effects of a proposed accounting standard on the financial statements and business activities of an organisation.

Data Analystics (topic 15)

15. Analyse and evaluate the business and financial performance over a three year period of an organisation operating in a sector that has faced strategic and operational challenges with an emphasis on how management have addressed these challenges.

Information System (topic 2,9)

2. An evaluation of how the introduction of a new technology can assist an organisation in achieving its business objectives.

9. A critical evaluation of the planning and implementation of an information system in an organisation.

Human Resource (HR) (topic 6,13)

6. A critical review of key factors or indicators in the motivation of employees in an organisation.

13. An evaluation of the contribution made by human resource activities to the attainment of business and financial objectives.

Management Accounting (topic 1, 10)

1. An analysis and evaluation of an organisation’s budgetary control system and its links with performance management and decision making.

10. A review of the effectiveness of the use of costing techniques within an organisation.

Financial Management (topic 14.15,16,19)

14. An appraisal of the business and financial objectives of a strategic investment decision made by an organisation and its impact on key stakeholders.

16. A critical evaluation of the financial and operational risk management within an organisation.

19. An analysis and evaluation of the financial and operational consequences of a merger between two organisations or of the acquisition of one organisation by another.

Marketing (topic 18)

18. A review of the marketing strategy of an organisation and its effectiveness.

Audit (topic 11)

11. An investigation into the financial and operational costs and benefits of the internal audit / internal review activities within an organisation.

Corporate Governance and Law (topic 3, 17,20)

17. Select an organisation that has been identified as having weak corporate governance structures within the past 5 years. Critically evaluate their corporate governance practices including an assessment of the origins of the corporate governance issue(s) and the organisation’s response.

20. Select an organisation that has been identified as having weak social responsibility practices within the past 5 years. Critically evaluate their social responsibility practices, including an assessment of the origins of the problem(s) and the organisation’s response and the impact of this on the organisation’s key stakeholders.

If the student selects topic 4,5 or 8, they need to be certain that they use the latest 3 years financial statements available at the start of the submission period (for a first time submission or a re-submission of a RAP on a new topic).

In the case of re-submission, it is not required to use the latest financial statement , only in the case of re-submission within the next four submission periods starting from the original submission date. This applies only in the chance of re-submission of the same topic and company. If the student has selected to change the topic and company, then the latest financial statements need to be used.

For all the other topics , the student needs to base the work on the most recent activities instead of some historical events. (For this purpose, the term “historical” refers to activities that occurred full three calendar years before the start of the current submission period.)

For ensuring the success in RAP, there are two critical aspects:

• The RAP needs to be aimed at a single company.
• The analysis needs to be a business analysis instead of just a financial analysis.

Click here for detail about complete guidance of Research and Analysis Project

Important Links

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• Overview of each topic
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• BSC Degree (ACCA Web Link)
• Role of Project Mentor
• RAP Submission Dates
• OBU Rules and Regulations
• OBU Website
• RAP Submission Link

Click  here  to access Registration Form.

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OBU – Oxford Brookes University BSc Honours in Applied Accounting.

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Below you will find a brief overview of the OBU programme which summarises the main initial aspects of the Oxford Brookes University BSc Honours in Applied Accounting .

What is the obu all about.

This is a unique programme designed by ACCA in conjunction with Oxford Brookes University intended to ensure that all students registering with ACCA have the opportunity to acquire not just the ACCA accounting qualification but also a university bachelor degree.

Most UK university bachelor degrees take 3 years to complete but by joining forces, the ACCA and OBU present a ‘fast-track’ way of getting those all important BSc letters after your name, but without any real short-cuts!  While you have been toiling over all of your ACCA exams you have been demonstrating technical accounting skills – just like students on Accounting and Finance courses offered by other Universities.

What is involved?

Most students are able to fulfil the OBU requirements in 3 months!  This does entail a fair amount of concentrated effort but is realistically achievable for the average student. 

To pass you need to submit a Research & Analysis Project (RAP) – a formal written 7,500 word report – on one of 20 set topics which meets OBU’s academic requirements,  together with a 2,000 word ‘Skills & Learning Statement’ (basically a self-reflection on how you covered the overall RAP objectives and how the process has helped you improve your study habits, communication and potential study/job prospects). 

OBU Information Pack

OBU has produced an OBU RAP Information Pack , it contains a mixture of information relating to many of the rules on how your RAP grade will impact on the classification of the honours degree if you pass, the timetable for submission, various checklists, the current submission fee,  but most importantly in the Appendices (currently Appendix 1) you will find the Assessment Criteria. Learn more

Download  OBU Information Pack   to find out all the OBU requirements and gives a lot of advice to get you started.

OBU Articles

Referencing – The Open Tuition Ultimate Guide to Referencing your RAP

‘Golden Rules’ and Principles of Good Referencing for the RAP

FAQs regarding Referencing in the RAP

Top 5 Reasons for failure (article by The Learning Luminarium)

Interview with the former OBU marker Gillian Moorse

Find out from the former OBU marker about common mistakes students make, which topics should be avoided and main reasons students fail their RAP.

Read more >>

The Research & Analysis Project (RAP)

This is a formal 7,500 word report on one of 20 set subjects .

In addition to the Research & Analysis report you must also submit a 2,000 word (approx.) Skills and Learning Statement and Presentation slides at the same time.

Evaluation and Analysis

In order to produce a successful RAP you have to evaluate and / or analyse information from a range of sources. This means creating some meaning of what you have found, or making a judgment or coming to a conclusion. If you only report the information that you have found or generated, you will not pass the RAP. The ability to evaluate and / or analyse information is a very important graduate attribute and the grade that you are awarded for your RAP will be significantly influenced by ‘how well’ you demonstrate your evaluative and/or analytical skills in your RAP.

How to tackle Evaluation and Analysis in the RAP Part 1

How to tackle Evaluation and Analysis in the RAP Part 2

A Brief Run Through of Evaluation in the Context of the RAP Topics

Referencing

Referencing (along with evaluation and analysis) remains the most common reason for failure of first submissions. this is particularly frustrating for a student when they have otherwise done a very good rap as it means that any resubmission can only ever achieve a c grade..

The article contains hints and guidelines to avoid a failure. It is basically in 3 parts:

Part 1 , is background information about why there is the emphasis on referencing in the first place, which then helps you appreciate Part 2 which sets out the Golden Rules . Part 3 answers some frequently asked questio ns . The last of these questions, Q10, contains a lot of useful links to websites where you will find more details of how to deal with particular types of references (it would be impossible to outline all of these in one article). However if you explore the links you will find that with some of them you can enter the type of reference you are having a problem with and it will show you how to deal with it.

Choosing your Mentor

In order to complete your RAP you will need to have a project mentor.

The mentor should be someone whom you feel is the right person to help guide you through the RAP process.

How to choose a Mentor?

Submission and Assessment Criteria

There are 2 opportunities per year to submit your work: May and November. The project must be submitted online at the Oxford Brookes University submission portal  website by the date of latest submission.

Learn more about deadlines, fees and acceptable formats

OBU Results

The academic conduct office (aco).

The Academic Conduct Office (ACO) is the OBU department that deals with any potential infringements of the University rules or regulations. It exists to maintain the integrity of the University’s degree system and to ensure that all students comply with the expected standards of academic behaviour demanded of a UK university.

  ‘Marker-Speak’

Are you puzzled by your marker’s comments? Are you struggling to make sense of your feedback sheet and relate it to your work? We have produced an article to help students decipher the marker’s comments. Understanding what the Marker Feedback really meant

Resubmission

Although failing the RAP or SLS (either the written part or the Presentation) first time will obviously be a disappointment, you will have 2 further attempts to make good any deficiencies.

RAP Submission and Assessment Criteria

The resubmission statement – how a good one is your key to success on resubmission, passed your rap and now have the bsc applied accounting.

Why not develop your skills further and increase your career opportunities? Oxford Brookes University offers the following Masters degrees specially aimed at ACCA graduates:

The flexible learning *Global MBA*

OBU Forum moderator  have answered some of the most frequently asked questions,  and an OBU marker for the BSc (Hons) degree in Applied Accounting has added a few relevant comments. Read OBU FAQ here 

If your question is not answered, please search or post them on OBU forums

OBU Support forums

Only on OpenTuition you can find expert and free advice from people who really know about the OBU RAP.  If you have a query or a useful comment then you can post this to the appropriate forum and share it with others.

See how OpenTuition can help you get your OBU BSc (Hons) Degree

Visit also  OBU Forums  for expert advice from contributors who have had years of experience in helping students prepare for their RAP submission and in some cases contributors who themselves have gained their degree by going through the OBU RAP process.

Get the Reddit app

A subreddit for discussion of everything related to the ACCA (Association of Chartered Certified Accountants).

OBU BSc Applied Accounting - time commitment

Several people have asked how long it takes to prepare the submission for the BSc in Applied Accounting from Oxford Brookes University (OBU).

Now, it's important to emphasize that we're all different and it's hard to make blanket statements on how long it's going to take. It depends on your background, how good (and fast) you're at writing English, etc

Having said this, I thought I'd share how long it took me since I kept track of my time. It took me 130 hours .

Some notes:

This is the time I actually spent working on this project. I spent at least the same number of hours (and probably more) procrastinating.

I had experience with graduate studies and writing academic papers. You will need more time if you don't know how to reference properly, if you have never written a report of this size, etc.

Don't divide the number by 40 and think you can do the project in 3 weeks. This project will take several months: you need to find a topic, find a mentor, discuss with the mentor, do your background research, write a first draft, leave enough time for the mentor to give you feedback, incorporate their feedback, etc. You have to start early!

I don't have a detailed breakdown (background research, writing, SLS, etc). However, I have an exact time log so I could provide a breakdown if there's a lot of demand.

I chose topic 17 (Corporate Governance). I'm not sure if some topic are more or less demanding.

OpenTuition has a forum with excellent tips . The Research and Analysis Project (RAP) is a bit tricky because there are no examples of what good and bad RAPs look like. The OpenTuition forum has guidance on what to do and what to avoid. A good mentor will also guide you.

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Search the Library

On this page is information for anyone wanting to find theses written by other people and also information for PhD students about their online thesis.

Finding theses

Copyright and your online thesis.

This section is for researchers who would like to find and read theses from Oxford Brookes or other universities.

Oxford Brookes theses

A copy of every Oxford Brookes PhD and MPhil thesis is deposited with the Library in print format (also known as a 'hardcopy'), online format (also known as 'electronic' theses or eTheses), or in both print and online formats. Oxford Brookes theses submitted from 2021 onwards are only available from the Library in online (or 'electronic') format.

To find print and online Oxford Brookes theses you can search LibrarySearch  by author, title, keyword, while for only the online theses you can browse or search  our repository RADAR .

Locating theses from other institutions

• ProQuest Dissertations & Theses provides access to multi-disciplinary dissertations and theses from around the world, offering over 5 million citations and 3 million full-text works from thousands of universities.
• EBSCO Open Dissertations : enables you to search for thousands of open access dissertations
• British Library’s EThOS project : a theses digitisation project. You can search across 500,000+ theses for free and download / order full text where available. You will need to register and log in if you want to download a thesis or to order digitisation of a thesis.
• CORE : CORE (COnnecting REpositories) is an aggregation of open access content from UK and worldwide repositories and open access journals. It includes access to theses.
• DART-Europe : provides details of European theses with access to full text where available.
• National Library of Australia Trove Service : a free repository of Australian material, including almost a million Australian theses.
• Global Electronic Theses and Dissertation Search : a database of open-access electronic theses and dissertations worldwide from the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.

Academic Liaison Librarians

For help finding theses contact your Academic Liaison Librarian (select course resource area from list on page)

This section is for postgraduate researcher students who will be submitting an online PhD thesis as part of their doctorate degree.

What is 'third party content'?

Many theses will include text, images, or other materials that were originally created by other people - this is known as 'third party content'. Material that might be in your thesis and which could be considered third party content includes:

• Lengthy quotations and extracts from publications such as books or journals even if you have attributed them correctly.
• Patented material
• Models/diagrams copied as found from books, even if attributed correctly
• Maps, such as Ordinance Survey photocopies, or taken from books, even if attributed correctly
• Photocopies/scans of paintings and other artworks, or manuscripts and historical documents.

Sometimes students believe they can reproduce third party material in their thesis if they provide a reference to the original - but this is not the case. See the next section for more details.

Using third party content in your online thesis

Third part content is the intellectual property of other people, which means you may need the permission of the copyright holders before including the material in the version of your thesis that will be publicly available on the institutional repository of Oxford Brookes. Here are some conditions under which you can use third party content in your online thesis:

• The third party content has been given a licence (e.g. a Creative Commons licence) which allows you to use the material in your online thesis without contacting the copyright holder.
• A formal legal exception to copyright law means you can include the third party content in your online thesis without the permission of the copyright holder.
• The work is 'out of copyright', meaning that the duration of copyright protection has expired.

You have contacted the copyright owner of the third party material and they have given you permission to include the material in your online thesis. To request permission first establish who the copyright holders are (there may be more than one), try to contact them ( here is a template letter  that you can adapt), and keep records of all communications (separately from your Oxford Brookes email).

If none of the above conditions apply then you must remove the third party content from your the version of your thesis that will be publicly available before you upload it to RADAR. This can be done individually or in bulk:

• Individually: remove each item of third party content that you do not have permission to use in your online thesis but leave a similar amount of blank space so that the pagination is unchanged.
• In bulk: when writing your thesis put all the third party content that you do not have permission to use in the publicly available version of your thesis within a single section of your thesis (e.g. an appendix), then remove that particular section before uploading that version of the thesis to RADAR. For example, Thompson's thesis The furrowed face originally had an Illustrations section (see the Contents List) that is not actually included in this online version of the thesis (though the bibliographic details of the sources are included in the List of Illustrations).

Whichever way you remove the third party content, please remember these two key points:

• Remember to include the bibliographic details of all the third party content in the main body of the text and/or in a separate section so that the readers of your online thesis can easily find the original sources for themselves. Ideally this will also include an electronic hyperlink to each resource (preferably a persistent link, e.g. a DOI).
• For any third party content that you do have permission to use in your online thesis, ensure you state this clearly directly underneath the third party content (e.g. 'Used with permission of the author / publisher /photographer / author /creator' or 'Used under the terms of the licence...', etc.).

Sources of information relating to using third party content:

• General guidance on using third party content by the Intellectual Property Office of the UK Government
• Duration of copyright by Copyright User
• Quotation and copyright by Copyright User
• Using images by Oxford Brookes as part of a Moodle course called 'Copyright and Publication'
• Digital images, photographs, and the internet by the Intellectual Property Office of the UK Government
• Creative Commons licences are often used by publishers and authors to state how online materials can be reused by other people

Personal data and issues of confidentiality

Personal data and confidentiality are usually separate issues from copyright and third party content, but the involvement of human participants in your research (or the inclusion of material that identifies individuals in your thesis) also requires special consideration when submitting the electronic version of your thesis.

Sources of information on personal data:

• Data protection and privacy : considerations for research by Oxford Brookes
• Guidelines for informed consent by Oxford Brookes
• GDPR and Research – An Overview for Researchers (PDF) by UK Research and Innovation

[email protected]

For help with your online thesis contact the Scholarly Communications Team

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Eligibility for the Oxford Brookes BSc (Hons) in Applied Accounting

• Oxford Brookes BSc
• Eligibility for the BSc degree
• Back to Oxford Brookes BSc
• Assessment of the degree
• The role of the project mentor
• Research and Analysis Project (RAP) submission
• Rules and regulations
• Celebrating success
• FAQs about the BSc degree
• Completion deadline - 2026

The opportunity to complete the BSc (Hons) in Applied Accounting will close in May 2026.

Qualifying for the degree

The information below details the eligibility requirements for this programme. However, please familiarise yourself with our completion deadlines before deciding whether to embark on this programme.

View more information on the completion deadlines for this programme

To be awarded the Oxford Brookes BSc (Hons) in Applied Accounting you must:

• Have passed the three ACCA Applied Skills examinations Financial Reporting (was F7), Audit and Assurance (was F8) and Financial Management (was F9).
• Have passed, or gained exemption from, the other six papers at the Knowledge Level and Skills Level.  Conditional exemptions are not acceptable.
• Have completed the ACCA Ethics and Professional Skills module (or the previous Professional Ethics module)
• Be up-to-date with the payment of your ACCA subscription fees. 
• Demonstrate currency of knowledge by either

- passing your RAP within 10 years of the earliest of: the date of your first ACCA examination pass, or the date of your first ACCA exemption being granted.

- passing 3 ACCA (Applied Skills or Strategic Professional) examinations in the 5 year period before submitting and passing your RAP.

          - being a full member of ACCA of good standing, over 1 year of ACCA           Membership (CPD and fees must be up to date).

If you're a student and hold exemptions for ACCA Applied Skills examinations Financial Reporting (was F7), Audit and Assurance (was F8) and Financial Management (was F9) then you can forfeit these in order to be eligible for the BSc. Once you have forfeited your exemption you cannot reverse this decision. If you wish to do this please contact ACCA.

If you're a member who gained exemptions from Financial Reporting (was F7), Audit and Assurance (was F8) and Financial Management (was F9) then you're not eligible for the BSc Applied Accounting.

For members, OBU will check your membership record with ACCA to confirm that your CPD is up to date. There is no need to provide OBU with confirmation of this.

Update on BSc

The opportunity for students and members to complete the BSc (Hons) in Applied Accounting from Oxford Brookes University is available for a limited time only.

Related documents

Download PDF 1.19MB

Oxford Brookes BSc degree information pack 2024-25

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