Of the 1,146 candidates who sat the registration exam last month (November 12), 667 were successful, resulting in an overall pass rate of just 58%, the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) and the Pharmaceutical Society of Northern Ireland (PSNI) today (December 17) revealed.
Meanwhile, some 479 (42%) of candidates failed the exam, they said.
Read more: UPDATED: November registration exam pass rate jumps to 66%
“The overall pass rate is one of the lower we’ve seen for the November sitting,” GPhC chief strategy officer Louise Edwards said.
The pass rate has dipped eight percentage points compared to last year, when 66% of November 2023 registration exam candidates passed the exam.
Read more: League table: Which pharmacy schools aced the June 2024 registration exam?
The GPhC today flagged only three previous November exam sittings with “pass marks equivalent or lower” to this year – November 2016 (41%), November 2022 (56%) and November 2017 (58%).
“The pass mark for candidates was set in the same way as usual, where the pass mark is based on the difficulty of papers to ensure the standard across different years,” Edwards stressed.
Candidate breakdown
Of the 1,146 candidates, the GPhC revealed that 523 (46%) were first-time sitters – 269 (51%) of whom passed.
Second-time sitters made up 499 (44%) of those examined and third-time sitters made up the final 103 students (9%), it said.
Read more: UPDATED: June registration exam pass rate drops to 75%
At 65%, second-time sitters had the highest pass rate compared to other candidates, while third-time sitters had a pass rate of 55%, it added.
Meanwhile, the regulators announced in July that a quarter of candidates did not pass this summers’ registration exam, when the pass rate dropped to 75%.
And in September, the GPhC revealed the rankings of each pharmacy school in the June exam – with Cardiff University topping the league table.
The GPhC announced in August that it is “seeking experienced providers” to fulfill a four-year-long, multi-million-pound registration examination contract.
