SQE assessments under review for bias against BAME candidates

Exam questions in all Solicitors Qualifying Exam (SQE) assessments will be reviewed for bias against black and minority ethnic candidates, the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has said.

A 2019 pilot of the SQE stage one assessments found that lower marks in the ‘written skills’ section were disproportionately assigned to BAME candidates, including students who had performed well across the three other ‘functioning legal knowledge’ multiple-choice exams. Findings from a recent pilot of the stage two exams (SQE2) are due to be published this summer, but as the Law Gazette reports, the SRA has already indicated concerns over a significant difference in results between BAME and white candidates.

Julie Brannan, the SRA’s director of education and training, told journalists that 'univariate' analysis (performance by individual candidate variables) pointed to the worrying trend, but said that overlapping variables mean that the early findings are not yet reliable.

Brannan confirmed that all SQE questions will be reviewed for cultural bias, adding: “We’re working closely with special interest groups, within the profession. We would welcome applications from a wide range of candidates, making sure we can recruit a diverse set of question writers and assessors.”

The SRA is also deciding whether SQE2 should be modelled on ‘uniform’ or ‘optional’ lines. A uniform SQE2 would require all candidates to pass the same wide-ranging series of exams covering multiple practice areas, offering the fairest form of assessment at the cost of inflexibility. Meanwhile, an optional approach would enable candidates to be assessed on skills they have gained through work experience and will be using as qualified lawyers, but may be less fair to all candidates because different groups could take different exams.