Questions remain over whether blunder led to TC offer cancellations
Kaplan and the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) have apologised this morning after it emerged that 175 students were incorrectly told they had failed parts of their Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE) assessments.
The results for the January 2024 SQE1 assessments have been “reissued” to correct an error by Kaplan in the calculation of students’ scores. The issue came to light as result of students appealing their original scores.
As a result of the error, 175 students who were originally told that they had failed either Functioning Legal Knowledge 1 and/or Functioning Legal Knowledge 2 (the two parts of SQE1) have, in fact, passed those assessments.
News of the exam marking blunder comes just weeks after Legal Cheek exclusively revealed that some students had their training contract offers revoked due to failing the January sitting of SQE1.
At a press briefing this morning, Legal Cheek asked both Kaplan and the SRA if they were aware of any instances where a student’s training contract offer was revoked due to the error.
Zoe Robinson, director of qualifications at Kaplan, said that at this stage, it is not aware of any candidates who have had their training contracts rescinded due to this error, but acknowledged the possibility. She confirmed that Kaplan would collaborate with any affected candidates to ensure they are adequately compensated for any impacts caused by the error.
Explaining how the error occurred, Kaplan and the SRA said: The way the results were presented was new for January’s SQE1 — rather than results being shown as a percentage mark, candidates were given a standardised score out of 500. The mistake was made when implementing this change. It was unique to the January 2024 results — no previous SQE assessments are affected. It was discovered by Kaplan through general checks conducted during the appeals period.”
The error doesn’t impact the overall pass/fail outcome for the other 6,451 candidates who took the assessment. However, certain candidates may notice alterations in their scores or their placement within quintiles. Quintiles classify candidates into five groups, with the top 20% seated in the top quintile, and so forth.
All 6,626 candidates who took SQE1 in January have been contacted by Kaplan and all results from this sitting have been reissued to candidates.
Robinson said:
“We are committed to putting this right for candidates, and sincerely regret and apologise for the impact this has had for those affected. A goodwill payment of £250 is being offered to those candidates who were incorrectly told they had failed an assessment in recognition of the upset caused by this matter. In addition, we recognise that individual candidates who received the incorrect outcome may have been impacted by this in different ways. We would encourage candidates in this group, who have incurred losses as a direct result of this error, to contact our Candidate Services Team to outline your circumstances and each will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. We have set up a dedicated email address for this purpose — SQE1Jan24@kaplan.co.uk.”
Paul Philip, Chief Executive at the Solicitors Regulation Authority, who oversee the SQE and qualification route for solicitors, said:
“We are really disappointed by this error and apologise to the candidates who have been affected. Our immediate priority has been making sure the error has been put right as swiftly as possible, and the impact on candidates is recognised and addressed. We will be doing a full review with Kaplan of how the error occurred, and redoubling efforts on assurance, so we can reduce the risk of an error happening again.”
This isn’t the first example of issues with marking SQE exam papers, although not quite at this scale. In September 2023 Kaplan apologised to students after it identified an “isolated error” with the marking of a small number of SQE2 assessments.
The news comes just days after the SRA confirmed SQE1 and 2 fees will rise by 5% to £1,888 and £2,902, respectively.
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