Talking with your parents about your career plans can be tough. Your ideas and theirs might not be the same. Showing them you’ve done your research may allow you to have a more constructive conversation about it.

We’ve prepared this blog to help you if and when you need to have a chat with your parents about your study options.

ACCA is a globally recognised qualification

This isn’t just a claim dreamt up by a marketing department, it’s what nearly every student says excites them about studying ACCA, while for our members working across all the world’s continents is just a fact – ACCA is the most globally recognised accounting and finance qualification.

Employers all over the world trust ACCA, through the rigorous training of our students and members, to ensure their businesses operate at the highest international levels. Indeed, our qualifications are designed in close collaboration with international employers, so our students and members are trained to operate at the cutting edge of our fast-developing business world, capable of meeting challenges head on.

This also means that ACCA students and members command competitive salaries for performing incredibly varied and challenging roles across all industries. In fact, junior finance positions are in high demand, with salaries rising accordingly to attract professionals even before they’ve completed their ACCA qualification.

Success and security… whichever career path you choose

ACCA’s qualifications give people the ability to define their own career paths. Due to the wide-sweeping financial knowledge our qualifications provide, people studying with ACCA can work their way up the ladders of traditional businesses, from junior accountants and bookkeepers, to financial analysts, financial controllers and managers and to board level as CFOs.

But what is not so widely known are the great numbers of our members who reach executive level through non-finance departments, even to CEO. Some carve out careers in big data, IT and analysis, while many work in the public sector or for NGOs.

And last but not least, given the holistic business training as well as the specific, technical financial teaching we provide, many of our members are part of the successful and growing wave of modern entrepreneurs, setting up their own dynamic accounting practices or innovative start-ups.

Skills for (everyday) life

It goes without saying that ACCA professionals have received top notch technical training, making them capable, from early on in their careers, of contributing in real-world business and finance situations. But more than this, we want our members to hit the ground running in whatever professional scenario they put themselves in, which means having skills that go beyond the technical and into the personal/professional – sometimes called soft skills.

Such skills are so important to employers these days, they can be the X-Factor when a business is selecting talent. Good communication, teamwork, leadership, being tech savvy, good ethics and problem solving are top of employers wish lists. And these are transferable to everyday life, as well as to future roles, whatever they may be.

Start ACCA at your level

Your son or daughter can start ACCA as early as they like, no prior qualifications necessary. If they’re keen to start their career journey fresh out of high school, no problem, there are thousands of schools offering ACCA all over the world. Even if university is not their thing, they could still earn a degree from Oxford Brookes University by studying ACCA. If they are interested in the university route, again no problem, they could even pass ACCA while at university.

A flexible qualification for modern students

If you think that gaining a qualification is all about blackboards, desks, pencils, notepads and spending all day in a classroom, think again, times are changing and we’re adapting. While traditional class-based study is still a very popular and valuable option, we have also endeavoured to make studying ACCA accessible to a wide, global and mobile audience.

We know that flexibility is increasingly desirable. We want people living in remote places, with no access to a school to have the opportunity to study ACCA and advance their dreams. We want people who work and/or have family commitments to fit study around their responsibilities. We want people who know they study better in the evening than during the day to be able to flexibly organise their studies.

That’s why your children can study ACCA full or part-time, in a school with one of our accredited tuition providers or via ACCA-X our online course platform. They can even sit nearly all of our exams online.

Your children are growing up in a fast-paced world. We want to provide them with options and choices so with your guidance they can confidently go forward into a rewarding and successful career.