QUESTION 1 (20 MARKS)

You have recently completed your postgraduate studies in Accounting and commenced with your training articles at Grace Auditors (Pty) Ltd Grace. During your first month being employed at Grace, you were just busy with training, but were then assigned as part of the audit team of Prestige College Prestige.

Prestige is a small educational institution in the private sector and has approximately 3,500 students. Prestige specialises mainly in two degrees namely Accounting and Information Technology. The duration of both these degrees are three years. Prestige offers degrees in the distance mode and educational services are provided online by Educators who are located at the Head Office in Bellville. Prestige also offers support centres in major cities across South Africa. At these support centres, staff members of Prestige offer administrative support. Students also visit these support centres to register, receive textbooks or use computer and internet services.

In terms of graduation, Prestige has two graduation ceremonies a year. One in December and the other one in March for students that still participated in the Supplementary Exams during January of each year.

Prestiges financial year-end is March 2022 and you are currently busy with the 2022 audit. The audit work is almost completed; however, you and another second-year Audit Clerk were tasked with the audit procedures in respect of the performance information of Prestige which is being published for the first time this year.

The Financial Manager of Prestige provided you with specific key performance indicators, generated by Prestige in terms of how the performance of Prestige is measured:

a) Graduation Rate this is the % of students who complete their degrees within 3 years.

b) Satisfaction this is the % of students that are satisfied with the experience at the Universities and especially with the Educators based on surveys given to students.

c) Academic performance this is the % of students that achieve distinctions.

d) Employability this is the % of students that find employment once they have graduated from Prestige.

Required

1.1 Discuss the relevance and measurability of the reported performance information as per a) d) above. (10 marks)

1.2 Recommend and formulate the audit procedures you would perform to audit the performance information as per a) d) above. (10 marks)