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SQE blunder: £250 goodwill payment ‘does not begin to repair the damage’, says Junior Lawyers Division  

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By Legal Cheek on

15

Could request super regulator investigation


The Junior Lawyers Division (JLD) has slammed the £250 offered by assessment provider Kaplan to SQE students affected by last week’s major marking blunder, arguing that it doesn’t even “begin to repair the damage that has been caused”.

In a statement on LinkedIn, the representative body said, “an error of this magnitude is simply not acceptable,” and that it would be seeking an urgent meeting with the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) to discuss how it proposes to rectify this “latest issue.”

Last week, it emerged that a calculation error had led to 175 students being incorrectly informed that they had failed either Functioning Legal Knowledge 1 and/or Functioning Legal Knowledge 2 (the two parts of SQE1), when in reality they had passed.

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The JLD, which represents SQE students, trainee solicitors, and junior lawyers across England and Wales, said that it had already reached out to several affected students and urged anyone else impacted by the mistake to contact them directly.

“We reserve the right to call for the Legal Services Board to investigate the matter,” it added.

Legal Cheek revealed last week that students who had their training contract offers rescinded were among those hit by the marking error.

15 Comments

Defund the SRA

Kaplan and SRA senior management need to be fired for gross negligence

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(72)(5)

'Archibald is cringe' is cringe

I agree. This sort of incompetence seems to be baked in, but we cannot allow it to become the new normal.

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(9)(0)

Casual observer

It’s unclear what else can the SRA do to keep everyone happy.

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(4)(45)

What about the SQE2 marking victims

Great that the SRA have been so generous as to offer £250 to these candidates (cost to appeal the SQE marks was £850…)

But there has still been no public statement about those students who failed the SQE2 because of a marking error (entire day of exam questions + these students were scored 0s for everything). From what I understand (and this needs to be verified) they were actually made to pay to sit the exams again! Think there needs to be an investigation into this + why there was such a cover-up.

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(84)(1)

Archibald is cringe

People affected by that should write to JLD, LC, and their course providers who should pressure the SRA/Kaplan to rectify this issue. I wonder how many other people have been incorrectly given 0s in other SQE2 sittings

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(11)(2)

Archibald is cringe

“From what I understand (and this needs to be verified) they were actually made to pay to sit the exams again! ”

I should have mentioned that I do take some issue with this. If you haven’t verified something, and it sounds preposterous, then why would you cite it, except to whip up more emotion against Kaplan?

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(1)(5)

SQE2 victim

As someone affected by the BCMA error. I can “verify” that yes, we are being asked to pay £2900 (bear in mind it was £2400 when we originally sat too). We don’t even get the £250 that the sqe1 were given or anything. We were made out to be crazy by Kaplan like we genuinely scored 0. They then remarked them with the same markers/assessment board than before and left the results just shy of having any impact on the statistics (which would even result in solicitors currently practicing who shouldn’t be), and aside from 1 person who couldn’t have really scored anything above a 0 and still fail, along with already having a free resit so it’s not profitable asking them to resit, everyone got a grade so close to the pass mark without tipping over – as in, 0.6 – 2% ish off.
It’s been swept under the rug like it’s not a huge case of negligence and pure fraud.

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(16)(0)

Completely unrelated

This is completely unrelated to the article. Please don’t bash me I just picked the latest article to say this. Moderators, you don’t even have to post this one, just a note for you. Can we please have an article: “if the MC firms were Hogwarts houses”? Where you sort the MC firms into houses. There are (debatably) five, so please sort two into Hufflepuff.

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(3)(43)

Archibald is cringe

Do you seriously think you’re funny?

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(9)(0)

That’s so mean

What about freedom of speech huh Archibald??? Live and let live?? So what I want a Hogwarts article I have a right to express myself!!!!!!!!!

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(1)(1)

Liz Truss runs the SRA

And the SRA has the audacity to release a report about how well the sqe is going…

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(27)(0)

Kevin

This happened in 2019 and none of our complaints were heard. We were all made to look crazy. I had to give up on my dreams and move on.

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(12)(0)

Archibald is cringe

Forgive me for saying so, but it doesn’t appear that you HAVE moved on, if you’re commenting bitterly on Legal Cheek half a decade later.

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(1)(6)

SQE victim

The first SQE1 was 2021 ?

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(0)(0)

Anonymous

Clearly the JDL should call for the Legal Services Board to investigate the matter and to struck off those who have fallen below the high standards expected from the Regulator and exam providers. The attempt by the SRA and Kaplan to swept it under the cheap carpet of £250 is immoral.

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(0)(0)

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