Of the 1,174 trainee pharmacists who sat the registration assessment last month (11 November), 722 were successful, resulting in an overall pass rate of 62%, the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) and the Pharmaceutical Society of Northern Ireland (PSNI) today (December 16) revealed.
Meanwhile, some 452 candidates (39%) failed the exam, they said.
Read more: BREAKING: November registration exam pass rate plummets to 58%
Today’s pass rate rose by almost four percentage points (to 61.5%) compared to last year, when 58% of November 2024 registration exam candidates passed the exam.
GPhC chief standards officer Lynsey Cleland congratulated “all those who passed the assessment” this year.
Read more:PSNI reveals 90% June registration exam pass rate amid GPhC IT chaos
“It is the culmination of years of hard work, and we wish you a successful and fulfilling future in pharmacy,” she said, adding that “we look forward to you joining our register”.
For anyone “who unfortunately did not pass the assessment at this sitting, there is information on our website on what options are available to you,” Cleland said.
Candidate breakdown
Of the 1,174, the GPhC revealed that 602 (51%) were first-time sitters – 360 (60%) of whom passed.
Second-time sitters made up 439 (37%) of those examined and third-time sitters made up the final 133 (11%), it said.
Read more: UPDATED: November registration exam pass rate jumps to 66%
At 68%, second-time sitters had the highest pass rate compared to other candidates, while third-time sitters had a pass rate of 47%, it added.
Read more: UPDATED: June registration exam pass rate drops to 75%
It comes after the GPhC issued an apology in July after pharmacy trainees who sat the June registration assessment were initially unable to access their exam results.
And the PSNI revealed at the time that there was an overall pass rate of 89.5% among candidates who sat the June registration assessment in Northern Ireland.
Meanwhile, the pass rate last November plummeted by almost 10 percentage points compared to the previous year with the GPhC saying at the time that “the overall pass rate is one of the lower we’ve seen for the November sitting”.
