Orpin: Questions about the SQE’s affordability
The interim chief executive of the Legal Services Board (LSB) has called on the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) to publish data on Solicitors Qualifying Exam (SQE) pass rates by provider “as soon as possible”.
Richard Orpin also said the legal profession needed to “look harder” at ways of encouraging entrants from “different backgrounds” after the government’s decision earlier this year to withdraw funding for Level 7 apprenticeships for those aged over 21.
The LSB criticised the SRA for not publishing pass rates by provider in March as part of its annual assessment of the performance of the legal regulators.
Speaking at yesterday’s Westminster Legal Policy Forum on legal education and training, Mr Orpin said that when the SRA applied to the LSB for approval to introduce the SQE in 2018 and 2020, the regulator committed itself to publishing pass rates by provider.
He said that although the SRA had “met most of its commitments to monitor and evaluate data” about the exam, “we are concerned about the continuing lack of publicly available pass rate data by provider”.
Mr Orpin said: “We also have questions about the SQE’s affordability, design and quality and how the SRA is addressing this.
“We’re concerned that without pass rate data by provider, SQE candidates can’t make fully informed decisions about providers.”
Mr Orpin said the LSB would be consulting later this year on outcomes for regulators in relation to training pathways and professional competencies, which would include the requirement to publish data about costs and pass rates.
The SRA is set to publish a five-year review of the SQE this year.
The Department for Education announced in May that it would restrict funding for Level 7 apprenticeships, like the solicitor offering, to those aged between 16 and 21.
Responding to a question on the issue, Mr Orpin described the decision as “really regrettable”, adding: “I think that means the sector now needs to look harder at ways we can support people from different backgrounds to come into the profession and we can work towards making it more diverse and inclusive.”
Mr Orpin said the LSB had a remit to ensure that there was “consistency” in the standards adopted by the regulators in terms of education and training, and that included ethics.
“Part of the reason for us looking at ethics training and how that can be made more prominent is because we see at the moment an inconsistency in how ethics are taught across the different regulators.”
The LSB is due to publish its response to consultation on a statutory statement of policy on ethics later this year.
Julie Swan, director of education and training at the SRA, said that more than 30,000 candidates had taken at least one SQE exam in 50 different countries.
Since candidates were now combining courses from more than one provider, it was “more difficult” to produce data, but it would “shortly” be published on the July sitting of SQE 1.
Ms Swan described the solicitor apprenticeship route as a “triumph” in providing a “very affordable” route to qualification, with candidates performing “really well”.
She said funding of apprenticeships was being limited by the government, but not the availability of the route to qualification, and interest in apprenticeships was “flourishing” both among schools and in law firms.
