Follows provider pass rate data issue
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has changed when it asks SQE students about how they prepared for the exams, confirming that they will now have to complete a separate training provider survey after sitting the assessment and before accessing their results.
In an update published last week, the regulator said candidates will continue to complete the diversity survey before booking their SQE assessment. That survey gathers data on candidates’ backgrounds, including age, disability, caring responsibilities, education, ethnicity and socio-economic background, and is used to monitor diversity across the SQE cohort.
The key change concerns questions about how students prepared for the exams, including any training provider they used. Instead of collecting this information when candidates first create an SQE account, often long before they have completed, changed or even begun their preparation, the SRA will now gather it after they have sat the SQE but before their results are released.
In practical terms, that means students will not be able to access their results for any sitting until they have completed the training provider survey.
The new approach follows the SRA’s admission late last year that a flaw in how it collected data left it unable to publish pass rates by SQE training provider, despite pledging to do so by late 2023.
The SRA says the shift in timing is intended to improve the accuracy of the data collected. It is also considering whether, and how best, to contextualise and publish the information so that it provides meaningful guidance to future would-be lawyers weighing up their prep options.