BPSA ‘wholeheartedly disagree’ with exam claims against GPhC
The pharmacy students’ group has defended the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) in the wake of criticism about September’s low registration exam pass rate.
The British Pharmaceutical Students’ Association (BPSA) told C+D on Monday that it “wholeheartedly disagrees” with “unfounded allegations” accusing the GPhC of “lies and corruption” around its revised assessment.
The BPSA is currently organising a meeting with the regulator to continue “constructive discussions” about the registration exam, secretary general Tom Byrne said.
September’s pre-reg exam had an unprecedented low pass rate of 41%, compared with a 95% pass rate for the June sitting. The pass mark needed for September was 65% across the two papers, compared with 63% in June.
The exam had already proven controversial before the results were released. Some students threatened to protest over the perceived difficulty of the two papers, while an online petition demanding the “traumatic” exam be reviewed garnered more than 700 signatures.
Students and tutors accused the GPhC of setting “unfair and unrealistic standards” for the September exam, the second sitting of the regulator’s revamped assessment.
Mr Byrne said the BPSA “empathises” with how “disheartening” failing the assessment is for candidates, but stressed that it thinks each exam goes through a “robust and fair” moderation process.
“A distinction has to be made somewhere, and on this occasion [the pass mark] was 65%,” he said. The BPSA will “seek further clarification” from the GPhC about how this pass mark was reached, he added.
In its report on the latest assessment, the GPhC’s board of assessors noted that a higher proportion of students who sat the September exam took it for the second or third time, and may have withdrawn from June’s sitting or started their pre-registration training late due to failing part of their MPharm degree.
Mr Byrne said that all of these factors would “logically predispose” September’s candidates to be more likely to fail the exam.
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