Law student Scott McCulloch puts his head above the parapet to defend the new solicitor exam regime
The National Junior Lawyers Division (NJLD) published a survey report on 9 April 2026, which Legal Cheek reported under the headline that 80% of Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE) students consider the route ‘not fit for purpose’.
The report raises several legitimate operational concerns that deserve constructive engagement. However, the lead finding is methodologically unsound; the implied conclusion that the SQE is broadly unfit is not supported by the data the NJLD itself presents; and the framing omits the comparative context essential for evaluating any professional qualification system. This commentary addresses each of those deficiencies in turn.
The survey canvassed 476 current and former SQE candidates. To appreciate what that number means, it is necessary to consider scale. By the end of 2024, the Solicitors Regulation Authority had administered SQE1 to well over 20,000 candidates across multiple cohorts since the examination’s introduction in November 2021. A voluntary online survey yielding 476 responses represents at most approximately 2% of the candidate population.
Voluntary surveys of professional qualifications are structurally biased towards respondents with strongly held views, particularly negative ones. Candidates who have passed comfortably and progressed into practice have limited incentive to complete retrospective feedback surveys. While the NJLD acknowledges the response base, the presentation of the 80% figure risks implying representativeness that the methodology cannot support.
The sub-sample sizes reinforce this point. The ‘80%’ finding derives from 272 respondents who answered the relevant question, not from the full 476. That represents approximately 1.4% of the candidate population. This is not a marginal caveat. It is a limitation that significantly constrains the conclusions that can properly be drawn.
Stripped of overextended conclusions, the survey reveals a set of credible operational concerns. Booking difficulties, reported by 53.71% of respondents, including lack of test centre availability in certain regions, are consistent with widely reported issues in exam administration. Concerns regarding reasonable adjustments, with half of the eighty respondents requiring adjustments reporting inadequate provision, raise serious questions and may engage obligations under the Equality Act 2010. Calls for greater transparency, including access to past papers and clearer marking criteria, are both reasonable and necessary for a high-stakes, high-cost assessment.
These are complaints about delivery and administration. They are not evidence that the SQE is conceptually unfit for purpose. Nor do they establish that it is uniquely problematic when compared to its predecessor, the Legal Practice Course, which itself was subject to longstanding criticism relating to cost variability, inconsistent standards, and unequal outcomes.
The ‘not fit for purpose’ framing becomes more difficult to sustain when the SQE is considered alongside other UK professional qualification systems. The Final Diploma examinations for chartered patent attorneys, administered by the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys, routinely produce pass rates below 50%, with some papers failing the majority of candidates and requiring a full year before resit. Within medicine, the MRCPsych produces pass rates that frequently fall within a comparable range, with progression through the training pathway taking significantly longer than the minimum expected duration for many candidates.
At the bar, the principal barrier is not examination performance but the scarcity of pupillage. A substantial proportion of candidates who complete the Bar training course never secure pupillage, despite significant financial investment. This outcome is accepted as a structural feature of the profession, rather than evidence of systemic unfitness.
This comparison does not minimise the SQE’s shortcomings. It situates them. High failure rates, significant cost, and demanding assessment standards are characteristic of professional qualification systems designed to protect the public by ensuring minimum competence.
The NJLD’s more measured position, as articulated by its chair, is both constructive and appropriate. The SQE is a relatively new qualification framework. Transitional issues in administration are unsurprising, but they require resolution. The programme of reform identified, including improved transparency, greater access to preparatory materials, an independent cost review, and a strengthened reasonable adjustments process, is well aligned with the evidence. These are targeted improvements to a functioning system. They are not grounds for characterising the system as fundamentally unfit.
Survey evidence of this kind is most valuable when it identifies specific, remediable issues. The NJLD survey succeeds in doing so in relation to administration, access, and candidate support. It does not establish, on its methodological basis, that the SQE is unfit for purpose. Professional qualifying examinations are, by design, rigorous and often difficult. That difficulty is not a flaw. It is a safeguard. The SQE’s problems are real and require attention, but they do not amount to the systemic failure suggested by the headline.
Scott McCulloch is a law student at The University of Law and a member of BARBRI’s SQE Student Committee.