Prue Dean – Starting Out
At school, my careers interview lasted all of 10 minutes; “As you’re a farmer’s daughter, you may as well go off and train to be a farm secretary”, so I duly went off and did this. However, there was no call for this type of role in the South West (no big estate farms in the area), so I worked on people’s farms as a herdswoman for a few years.
The next career
I had always had a yearning to do something artistic – (Art and English being the only subjects at school that I was reasonably good at). So I went to London where I achieved a BA (Hons) degree in Graphic Design (specialising in Illustration). I got myself an agent and spent the next 13 years undertaking commissioned work for design agencies, product packaging, children’s educational books and a bit of magazine work.
All was going well until computers came in, which took away virtually all of the illustration work. My agent went bust and then there was the economic downturn. I moved back down to Devon and with a young family in tow, desperately needed to find a reliable full-time income, so I re-trained.
Beginning my career in accounting
I undertook a couple of IT courses and soon after started working for Accountancy Plus Training (A+ Training) as a trainee IT assessor for the IT NVQ that the business was offering to local firms. During this time, I went onto to do my Cert Ed teaching qualification followed by an MSc degree in Educational Research and a Level 7 Subject Learning Coaching course. As it was becoming obvious that A+ Training would soon cease offering IT training, I decided to bite the bullet by undertaking the AAT qualifications.
To start with, getting my head around the ‘Double Entry’ bookkeeping concept was a big challenge for me and I thought I would never ‘get it’, but eventually with lots and lots of practice, it began to ‘stick’.
I never forget the day when I took my first exam – it had been 20+ years since I had sat an exam under invigilated conditions. I remember my hand trembling so badly that I couldn’t hold my pen properly – my mind had completely frozen. After 20 mins of skimming through the exam paper, I finally spotted an easy question that I instantly knew the answer to, and this gradually eased me into the rest of the paper. Thankfully I passed first time (as I did with all the subsequent AAT exams).
Eventually, my work with A+ Training required me to get involved with ‘stand up’ classroom teaching. The thought of this petrified me – living life as an illustrator (and even on the farm) was a remote existence that had resulted in me being a very shy, quiet individual.
Despite preparing well, in all my time teaching, I never slept well the night before and would be wracked with nerves until the following day’s session had begun. After 5 or 10 minutes though, I would relax into it and then all would be fine. I found it thoroughly rewarding being able to help students get to grips with accounting – I had been there myself, so could empathise with the difficulties they faced, and soon built up a repertoire of different ways to explain the concepts to suit individual learning needs.
Course writing
After a few years of teaching, I went on to re-develop all of the AAT Level 2 course materials, using the recently introduced interactive Articulate Studio software. When we launched Accountancy Learning, I converted the materials into online ‘bite-sized’ learning sessions and recorded voiceovers for each of the interactive slides. I am still responsible for updating and writing additional materials for the AAT Level 2 qualification and am currently writing updates for the new AAT Q2022 syllabus which launches in September.
Studying via distance learning
For the first 5 or 6 years with Accountancy Learning, I looked after 100+ distance learning students, from all walks of life, with many of them embarking on an accounting course with no prior experience. Plenty would be nervous and unsure of whether accounting was the right route for them, with some saying that maybe they were too old to learn something new or others saying they didn’t think they were good enough at Maths. My own background helped hugely here, given I was nearly 40 years old when I started my accounting journey and nobody could be as bad at Maths as I was!
A few study tips
With accounting, I soon learned that you didn’t actually have to be good at Maths (phew!) – once you’ve cracked the ‘double-entry concept’, pretty much all you need to be good at is conscientiously recording information in a logical, organised manner. It takes lots of patience and lots of regular practice, but it does gradually start to sink in.
Learning on your own can be tough though – it can be difficult to keep motivated, especially when there are so many other responsibilities and distractions, so I used to make sure I planned specific times during the week to study (mainly in the evenings when the children had gone to bed). For the two weeks before the exam, I found that going over and over past papers and then checking the answers, was one of the best ways to get myself ‘exam ready’.
Exams are designed to be testing – if they were easy, then we’d potentially have people working in the profession that perhaps shouldn’t be! Students passing the exams and gaining their AAT qualifications deserve to be proud of their achievement.
Reflection
Such a rewarding part of training and supporting students is seeing them blossom and grow as individuals during their learning journey. We all have our own set of problems in life and to see people overcome these to become confident individuals with a great qualification under their belt and good career prospects ahead, is a wonderful thing.
One student really brought this home to me when he sent the following email:
“…I joined Accountancy Learning when I was 20. I was employed valeting cars with absolutely no direction in life & I now work for a great accounting firm with the intention to apply for ACCA…”
It is humbling to know that we played a small part in that person’s future, and it’s why we do what we do here at Accountancy Learning.
Prue Deane