Last September’s registration exam results – in which 41% of students passed – once again brought to the fore issues around pre-registration assessment and training.

It could be argued that there is something inherently wrong when so many students fail a professional exam at the end of at least five years of teaching and training. The results of last September’s exam raise valid questions as to whether this is a failure, in part, of the system which these candidates passed through.

It also raises several other questions: are university entry standards too lax, due to an abundance of pharmacy schools and the need to fill spaces? Are candidates not of the required standard? Should there be a set pass mark for pharmacists to reach at university level?

In this series of blogs, I’ll examine these questions in turn. Let’s start with the cohort of trainees, and whether the exam was structured in a way that gave them the best possible chance of success.

Strength of the cohort

The alleged weakness of the cohort was identified by the General Pharmaceutical Council’s (GPhC) board of assessors as a plausible reason for the low result, in its assessment report into the September exam.

First-time candidates made up almost 60% of September's cohort, but only 47.6% of these passed. These candidates will not have all been weak, and certainly not all will have failed their MPharm finals, as suggested by the board of assessors. I am aware of numerous high-calibre students who have done particularly well at university and during their training year, yet went on to fail the September assessment.

Setting the right pass mark

Some candidates failed the assessment because they achieved just a quarter of a per cent less than the required 65.25% pass mark for the calculation section of the exam. Although some will disagree with me, surely such borderline candidates should have been given the benefit of the doubt and the percentage lowered to 65%?

Getting the exam right

Time was also mentioned as one possible factor behind lower pass rates by the British Pharmaceutical Students’ Association (BPSA) in its report to the GPhC. It would be good to find out what proportion of candidates finished the papers fully, how many of these passed, and whether candidates who had additional time (for example, due to learning needs such as dyslexia) fared any better.

Word count and question length were also mentioned as factors behind the poorer performance. Generally, these are usually broadly similar between papers – and I suspect this was the case on this occassion too. 

Moving forward

The overall pass rate for 2016 – an average of 84.9% across the June and September sittings ​– should not be used to gloss over a training system that needs reviewing, and certainly should not be used to legitimise a 40.56% pass rate for September.

The GPhC suggests that it will monitor future cohorts at each sitting to see if it needs to change the sitting dates. My suggestion is that the two sittings should be six months apart (eg in June and December), to give ample time to prepare for reassessment. This should be implemented sooner rather than later, to avoid detriment to future trainees.

Amar Iqbal is a pharmacist who has worked as a lead on pre-registration and student development. The views expressed in this piece are his and do not reflect any organisation.