Errors, Unhappy Staff & Mediocre Students: BPTC Monitoring Results

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By Alex Aldridge on

Legal Cheek brings you the parts of the Bar Standards Board report the providers won’t be highlighting in their prospectuses

College of Law Bloomsbury: “The panel invited the management team to account for the fact that there seemed to have been a large increase in first time pass rates and in students gaining an Outstanding grade in the academic year 2009-10, but fewer students gaining pupillage.”

Cardiff University: “There is a high proportion of students with 2:2s on the course since there are a high volume of applications from such students.”

City University: “…in 2010-11 there are 28% [students with 2.2s]”

Manchester Met: “The panel was concerned to learn from the teaching staff that their workload had recently been excessive: they could often teach from 9.a.m. until 9 p.m. without a coffee break.”

UWE: “…the answers to MCQs (multiple choice questions) given online were reported to be incorrect. This had unsettled students and affected their confidence about assessments. Staff confirmed that this had been a regrettable but one-off incident where incorrect answers had been loaded when the system had reverted to a default setting.”

Northumbria: “The students’ perception of the wider cohort was that there was mixed ability amongst their peers in terms of language and academic ability, and the consensus of the group with whom the panel met was that there are students on the course with language difficulties.”

College of Law Birmingham:
“Approval had been granted following the previous visit for 132 full-time students, but in the academic year 2010-11 only 63 had enrolled. The Management team explained that this was simply due to the fact that not enough students of the right quality had applied.”

BPP Leeds (pictured): “[Students] felt that one of the disadvantages of the location was its distance from the Inns of Court and the opportunities that existed in London for debating and mooting. Attending Inns events took extra organisation and effort, and it was likely to be impracticable to attend any mid-week events.”

BPP London: “The panel raised serious concerns with the conduct of the final Examination Board in July 2010: both the Annual Monitoring Report and a number of External Examiners’ reports indicated problems with incomplete/incorrect data that had only come to light at the Board itself… Given the gravity of the failure of essential systems and the fact that the matter had only come to light at the Board itself, the panel recommended that a thorough audit of Examination Board processes, in particular the production and presentation of data, should be conducted, and that the Law School should ensure that appropriate risk management measures are in place”

Nottingham Law School:
“The panel was interested to know how the Law School has been affected by working alongside Kaplan Law School… It was reported that since materials are produced at Nottingham for use in Kaplan, the workload is quite high. It was reported that it is difficult to timetable the increased number of pre-meets to discuss lesson plans and marking meetings…”

Kaplan Law School: “The panel was keen to understand the rationale behind the proposed increase in student numbers, and the extent to which these could be accommodated in the existing set-up without compromise in terms of the student experience at a Provider that regarded itself as a high quality, low volume destination… The management team indicated that there were no plans to reduce the funds available for scholarships, although neither was it yet clear whether available funds would be increased in line with an increase in student numbers.”