AAT Student News

How to make your career work for you

Paul Buzzard had enjoyed a successful career as a teacher until he needed to give up full time work to look after his severely disabled daughter who needs around the clock care.

Paul explains: “My daughter, Ione is nine years old suffers from cerebral palsy and is a quadriplegic. She needs daily physiotherapy and often is fed through a tube. Despite her difficulties, she has a delightful personality. Much of her caring falls to me, as my wife Jenny suffers from a bad back.

I have three other children and my youngest son suffers from asperger’s syndrome, so he also needs a lot of care.”

Paul needed to find a job that would allow him to work around caring for his daughter but would also bring in a regular income. His only choice was to find something that meant he could choose his own hours and that would be easy to retrain at the age of 52.

Paul decided that accountancy would be a suitable career for him because of the flexibility, which would be compatible with his role as a carer.  He decided to study for professional exams with the Association of Accounting Technicians (AAT). He studied for exams in the AAT Accounting Qualification Levels 3 and 4, Payroll Levels 2 and 3, and the Bookkeeping Certificate, all within one year. This is a remarkable achievement as students usually take a year to do each qualification. Paul studied at the Forest of Dean College and praises the excellent lecturers, Mary Stubbs and Nick Wallis for their support and encouragement.

Commenting on his achievement, Paul says: “It was immensely difficult to take all the four NVQs in one year and the Bookkeeping Certificate, whilst also being a carer to a severely disabled child. I need to look after Ione 24 hours a day and so never get a full night’s sleep.

However, at my age, time is not on my side and I needed to get qualified as quickly as possible. I am so grateful that I had Nick and Mary at the College to help and support me and my understanding wife, Jenny, to put up with this level of study.”

Paul has now set up an accountancy practice and is dealing with VAT, Independent Examinations, payroll and tax enquiries.

He has also used his AAT knowledge as a springboard to gaining other accountancy qualifications. Within a term of taking his last AAT papers he took and passed the four entry papers for the Association of Taxation Technicians, four ACCA papers (other than the three allowed for exemption due to the AAT NVQ4), and both fast-track papers of CIPFA together with the CIPFA paper on Public Finance.  Without the AAT training this would have been impossible.