A WOMAN from Horrabridge made the brave decision to hit the books and start a course with students the same age as her children in order to further her career. Janet Kendall, 33, went to Bristol in order to progress her accountancy career and qualified with the Association of Accounting Technicians (AAT). After that Janet went on to study with The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (ICAS) to satisfy her thirst for knowledge and has not looked back since. The journey started eight years ago while Janet was working for John Harraway, now retired, in Tavistock but realised that if she wanted to move up the career ladder she would have to train towards an official accountancy qualification. Putting her initial fears aside about studying in her 30s whilst also looking after her children, Janet enrolled with the AAT. Janet was so pleased with the new skills she learnt on her AAT course that eight years later she decided to study with ICAS to become chartered. Janet found the transition from AAT to ICAS training quite demanding; it was a while since she had last studied, she was learning alongside 20- year-olds and she had to stay in Bristol during the week in order to study. Nevertheless, she now looks back on her decision to re-train as one of the best decisions of her life. Janet said: 'The CA qualification is hard work, but well worth the end results — I was on cloud nine for a week after I passed my final exam! 'I would definitely recommend the AAT to ICAS route to becoming chartered to someone who hadn't been able to go to university, or to someone who doesn't know if they want to commit to training up to CA status as it will give them an intermediate qualification and make all the hard work worthwhile.' Janet is now a partner at Alan Forrester & Co in Plymouth, where her responsibilities include handling income tax, capital gains tax and VAT for individuals and small businesses.
