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SQE1 pass rate drops to just 44%

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By Legal Cheek on

19

Lowest success rate so far

Student sitting SQE
Less than half of students passed the most recent sitting of part one of the Solicitors Qualifying Exam (SQE).

The latest statistical report from the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) shows that, of the 5,006 candidates who attempted both parts SQE1 in July 2024, only 44% passed. This is the lowest success rate to date and represents a notable drop from the 56% pass rate for the January sitting.

The SQE was formally introduced in September 2021 as the new route to solicitor qualification. SQE1 focuses on functioning legal knowledge (FLK) whilst SQE2 focuses on legal skills.

The SQE Hub: Your ultimate resource for all things SQE

The report, published yesterday, shows the pass rate was slightly higher among those sitting the exam for the first time, at 48%. The pass rates for the two papers that make up SQE1 — FLK1 and FLK2 — were 55% and 50%, respectively, for all candidates.

Earlier this year, Kaplan, the company responsible for administering the SQE, issued an apology after 175 students were mistakenly informed that they had failed parts of their assessments.

Want to know more about the SQE? Be sure to check it out our SQE Hub for more information on the law schools offering support one the new pathway as well as more information about the assessment itself.

19 Comments

ARidd

Anecdotally, from those I’ve spoken to – many who failed January 24 or lost their TCs were attempting to sit this one without the backing of course providers like BPP,ULAW etc and were purely using smaller company textbooks (ReviseSQE and the like) /online sessions. Perhaps a contributing factor? Without putting out a past paper or at least some more sample questions its going to be incredibly hard for course providers and resource creators to ensure their products are up to standard.

Affordability/logistics I’ve also found was a big stress point, for myself I needed to book exams, book hotels and book transport to the London test centres- which is feasible on a firm grant but an absolute pain if you needed time off from work or don’t have a city firm’s financial firepower to support you

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(20)(20)

Gabriel Harr

The pass rate was 48% for first timers. Still a very significant drop.

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(19)(1)

Non-Russell Final Year

Are there not local test centres yet?

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(3)(2)

PJS

My local test centre is Preston, I still got sent to London

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(2)(0)

Passed SQE1

It’s difficult for students to effectively study properly when the SRA don’t release sufficient past papers for students and course providers. If the exam questions are changing or the marking is becoming harsher then the SRA need to release more guidance and examples to students so those sitting exams can prepare for them properly. Especially those who aren’t lucky enough to secure funding from their employers and have the extra stress of all the costs involved in retaking.

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(61)(0)

Taty

Surely the SRA/Kaplan are taking the p… and milking the SQE for every penny

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(27)(0)

PB

The 44% pass rate for the July SQE1 exam is certainly alarming, particularly when compared to the more consistent figures of previous sittings (53%, 53%, 52%, 53%, 56%). It could even be among the lowest pass rates in QLTS history, where the overall rate was a more palatable 57%. To suggest that this significant drop is due to candidates not studying hard enough is, frankly, a convenient but highly improbable excuse. The reality is that the questions appear to have been more challenging than in January or prior sittings, and let’s not forget the new rating system introduced since January 2024, which may well be a factor here.

The SRA can proclaim until the early hours that there’s no bias compared to earlier sittings, but let’s be honest—who’s buying that? Perhaps it’s time they took a moment of reflection: are they genuinely aiming to foster a fair and balanced qualification process, or is this just another cog in a well-oiled money-making machine, pushing candidates to retake the exam at least twice?

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(45)(1)

KTS

Ok. Here are my 5 cents on this one since I was there this July.

I scored above 350 points on FLK-1 and above 310 points on FLK-2. While it is all nice and fine it still is a difference of about 50 points. That is quite a lot.

And I guess, I know the reason why this is the case. The design of the actual questions on FLK-2 (in my case).

Briefly put, I would say that about 40 or may be even 60 questions on my FLK-2 were very, very hard. Like, really. And I did notice that this difficulty was totally artificial.

Let me refer to these test questions as ‘Extra Hard Questions’ or ‘EHQs’ for short.

So, this is how this artificial difficulty was achieved, in my opinion:

A wall of text – When you read the question itself the text of it takes almost the entire real estate of a 25–27-inch LCD display. And font-wise, it was something like Times New Roman 12-13, tops. So, it takes, physically, quite a lot of time to just read the scenario.

A scenario twist – These EHQs seem to have very, very convoluted or weird scenarios. Like, you read and read and read about one area of law, lots of facts and details and then, they just ask you something completely different in the final paragraph.

Very bloated answers – The answer choices for EHQs tend to be seriously verbose. So again, it takes a lot of time to just skim-read all the choices. And it all eats up one’s total time available.

Hair-split differences in answers – The differences in answer choices for EHQs are almost non-existent, they are really hidden in some minor details or nuances and under time pressure it is hard to make a right choice. Very often you must just guess, hoping you got it right. Or not.

So, this is my brief summary of the problem I spotted.

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(41)(2)

FVP

I sat the July SQE1. Although I did pass both sections, to be honest I did not feel confident about it until the day I received my scores. I felt that the FLK1 tested more on specific exceptions to rules rather than the rules themselves. And like another commenter here, I also felt that the FLK2 had some absurdly hard questions with answers that were different by only one word in some cases. The test felt harder substantively than the mocks through ULaw. Anyhow I am not surprised at the low pass rate. Best wishes to those who will need to retake it.

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(20)(0)

Reality of the SQE

SQE1 has a first time pass rate of about 50%, and SQE2 has a first time pass rate of 70% to 80% – with each round of exams costing thousands £££ to sit. On these statistics only around 35% of candidates first past time – if at all.

Every few months, 100s of aspiring solicitors dreams are crushed, training contracts lost, and they are forced to pivot into other career paths. However, you will only see the success stories shared online.

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(16)(1)

Outliers

This is interesting but shouldn’t really be alarming anyone.

Those who have training contracts mostly sit the SQE1 in January rather than July due to the timing of when the training contract starts. Those who sit in July are sitting in low season or are otherwise not part of the mainstream group (in terms of timing). It would be more interesting to see results from each January compared. If those were to change, that would be more of a concern.

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(3)(29)

Sophie

I would disagree with your comment. It is alarming.

Many training contract offer holders are in both intakes – the ones in July are no less important than those in January. There’s options as to when to start the PGDL/SQE and this does not always match with TC start dates (for example, someone might finish the SQE 6 months before starting their TC). So I find that your comment is based on assumptions rather than evidence.

In any case, whether a candidate is a training contract offer-holder or not, every candidate is important, especially when the aim of the SQE was to improve accessibility to the solicitor profession. Only ‘caring’ about training contract offer-holder results goes against this very sentiment. It is alarming that less than half the country’s aspiring solicitors did not pass this new exam, for which there is very little transparency on marking and examinable content.

I think what would be more ‘interesting’ is to instead look at the possible grass-roots reason behind this – is it that course providers are not teaching well? Is it the SRA’s new marking system? Is it the lack of transparency? Is it the layout and format of the exam that is not conducive to top performance? etc etc.

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(27)(3)

anon

The vast majority of firms have a March intake as well as September, so the march intake trainees take SQE1 in July and SQE2 in October.

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(5)(2)

7 years' PQE

Your comments about only being concerned about the “mainstream group” are, quite frankly, piss poor. I really hope you don’t have any involvement in the legal profession with judgement like that.

Sophie’s comments are much more sensible – I would read them and have a think about what the SQE’s intended aim was.

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(16)(2)

SRA Stan

As always, people will blame the Kaplan and the SRA instead of the candidates. Passed in the first quintile and thought it was one of the easiest exams I have sat.

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(4)(40)

KTS

In addition to what I have posted above about these ‘Extra Hard Questions’ and all.

The text of my fist post may look a bit artificial but that is because it is taken from my email to the sqe training provider to whom I tried to convey the message about the need to update their training materials to include the EHQs as I call them.

So, I would like to add that I did not meet such EHQs during my revision.

Neither my sqe training provider nor SRA website give anything similar to the EHQs I faced during the actual exam.

Trust me, I completed all the assignments (and extra) with my provider.
I also did all test Qs offered by SRA.
I also bought a couple of extra books just with more test Qs and finished most of them (For those interested the books are ‘FLK1/FLK2 Practice Assessment’ edited by Mark Thomas). But I never came across the Qs that were actually offered this July – not in style of their writing, not in style of the answer choices. There’s a post on reddit where someone said that they saw a similar type of hard questions when training with UOL but then, as far as I recall, that person also said that despite the scenarios being weird and hard the answer choices were more accessible. So, I don’t know what to make of it. Try to get as much prepared as possible. Do as many test Qs as you can. Expect the EHQs.

P.S. No, I have no tc. All adventure was totally self-funded, etc.

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(10)(0)

SRA Stan's alter ego

Wow, SRA Stan, first quintile? You must be a genius! Clearly, everyone else just needs to level up. Who knew all we needed was your superior insight to fix the whole exam system!

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(8)(2)

girl

I’m actually pissing myself. I take the SQE in january and i’m batshit scared. I’m also self funding as well. Therefore i’m paying money for materials that are not similar to the exam??? The SRA needs to fix up really and do something

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(5)(0)

Future Trainee

This is just a poor take.

I passed in the first quintile too and disagree with your comment and more importantly what you are trying to achieve by saying it.

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(7)(0)

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