Students: University and degree classification are the main factors affecting SQE performance
The Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE) is attracting a diverse range of candidates, with 35% from an ethnic minority and 37% from ‘less privileged’ backgrounds, new figures have shown.
Education and past academic success continue to be the main factors that influence a candidate’s performance, but those who have studied the legal practice course (LPC), first qualified elsewhere or are re-sitting perform below the average.
Despite concerns about the impact of the SQE on neurodiverse students, the figures showed that these candidates actually achieved slightly higher scores and pass rates than others.
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) published a statistical analysis of the first four years of the SQE, covering eight SQE1 and 12 SQE2 assessments – more than 30,000 candidates in 50 countries.
The pass rate for SQE1 ranges from 46% to 60%, with the differences attributed to the make-up of the cohort for each sitting. Of all candidates who have attempted SQE1 – including those who have had multiple attempts – 19,281 (66%) candidates have now passed.
The pass rate for SQE2 ranges from 69% to 84%. In all, 10,718 (85%) candidates have now passed.
Around 28% of candidates are Asian or British-Asian, compared to 10% of the working population, and 7% are Black or Black-British, compared to 3% of all workers.
Lawcab, the central applications service for post-graduate legal training, has previously estimated that in 2019/20 (the SQE was introduced in 2021) around 32% of LPC applicants were from ethnic minorities (many candidates refused to disclose their ethnicity).
There has been a longstanding attainment gap between White and ethnic minority students – seen beyond law – and research published by the SRA in 2024 found that multiple social, economic and educational factors combined to explain it.
A statistical analysis carried out by SQE provider Kaplan showed that 8% of variance in SQE1 scores, and 4% in SQE2, could be linked to ethnicity. The variance is a measure of how far the performance of candidates with a particular characteristic differs from candidates as a whole.
“[This] only explains a small proportion of the difference in overall pass rates, suggesting a more complex explanation,” today’s report said.
University ranking (12%) and degree classification (11%) together had the largest impact, but most of it was unexplained by the data. For SQE2 candidates, SQE1 performance and university ranking explained about 30% of the variance.
“It may be the cases that other factors, such as how a candidate prepares for the exam, have more impact than demographic characteristics,” the SRA said.
Gender, age, disability and socio-economic background appeared to have little impact.
Indicators of socio-economic backgrounds include the type of school a candidate attended and their parents’ occupation and education. These showed “a fairly even spread” in candidates, with around 37% of candidates from less privileged backgrounds.
The data also showed that candidates who declared a disability perform at least as well as other candidates, an improvement on the SQE.
Solicitor apprentices have generally performed above overage, with around 71% of those who have taken SQE1 and 93% of those who have taken SQE2 having passed. There was little difference between school leaver apprentices and graduate apprentices.
Typically, around 20% of those who resit SQE1 pass, while those qualified in either the UK or abroad have lower pass rates in general.
Students who have completed the LPC can qualify as a solicitor by taking SQE2 and they have lower pass rates too.
“This may reflect the fact that the LPC focuses on testing a candidate’s readiness to start a training contract, whereas the SQE tests whether a candidate is ready to practise as a solicitor, and so is more demanding,” the report said.
“The data shows that candidates who have completed the LPC cannot rely on their studies for that qualification to pass SQE2.”
Julie Swan, the SRA’s director of education and training, said: “The data contained in this report shows that the SQE is attracting a diverse range of candidates. The strong performance of solicitor apprentices is to be celebrated and is supporting social mobility.
“Kaplan’s latest report shows that neurodivergent candidates are performing well. This indicates that reasonable adjustments are removing potential disadvantages these candidates might otherwise experience in the assessments.”
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