Out of 2,823 candidates sitting the assessment last month, 615 failed – slightly above the regulator's prediction of between 500 and 600.

BPSA president Stephen Messham told C+D on July 14 that in a meeting with the GPhC three days previously, the regulator had predicted that the “middle two-thirds” of students would “do really well”.

The GPhC also had envisioned the scale of feedback the BPSA received about the exam last month, in which 583 students raised complaints including a lack of time and questions not representing the registration assessment framework.

The regulator uses “a lot of statistics” in an effort “to quality control the exam”, said Mr Messham, who pointed out that topics are weighted to show what proportion of questions will be dedicated to them in the exam.

“[The GPhC] showed us quite a few of the metrics in terms of the high medium and low weighting”, he said.

From sitting the exam himself, Mr Messham had thought the respiratory topic had been “over-represented”. But “when [the GPhC] showed the metrics, it wasn’t at all”, he said.

“A lot of it is the goldfish-bowl effect of being in that exam setting."

Mr Messham was speaking before the announcement of the June exam results, when the pass rate dropped 17 percentage points compared with the previous year.

The GPhC confirmed to C+D today (August 1) that the spread of exam results followed what Mr Messham called a "bell curve", and added that its board of assessors will provide a report on the exam at the regulator's next council meeting.