The Bar Standards Board (BSB) has today published the independent review of the August 2020 Bar Professional Training Course (BPTC) exams. The review was commissioned by the BSB in November 2020 and was conducted by Professor Rebecca Huxley-Binns, the Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Education) of the University of Hull and Dr Sarabajaya Kumar, an interdisciplinary social scientist based at University College London, who is also an equalities consultant and a disability activist.
The Review finds that the difficulties experienced by candidates sitting the August 2020 examinations were due to a variety of factors. The Review therefore contains a number of recommendations. In response, the BSB has also today published its Action Plan to ensure that the regulator acts upon those recommendations. The Action Plan is grouped into five main themes and includes measures to:
- improve the BSB’s communication and engagement with students and training providers during the exams process;
- make the centralised assessments more accessible and inclusive especially for those who need reasonable adjustments;
- make the BSB’s approach to policy and process development in this area more inclusive by improving the regulator’s engagement with key stakeholders;
- introduce a critical incidents policy and improve data protection and project management; and
- clarify the roles and responsibilities of the BSB and training providers in the management of the centralised exams and, where the BSB contracts with a third party supplier, to hold external parties to account in a more structured and formal way with clearer service expectations and performance measures.
Responding to the Review, the Chair of the BSB, Baroness Tessa Blackstone, said
“First and foremost, I should like to apologise again to all those students who faced difficulties completing their exams last August. The BSB had to move from pen and paper based assessments delivered by training providers to arrange computer based assessments in a very short period of time in the middle of a global pandemic. Ordinarily such a change would have taken at least 12 months to plan and to pilot. I am pleased that the report finds that the BSB was right to seek to offer computer based assessments and right to contract with Pearson VUE to deliver the exams, including to run remote proctoring for the students sitting the exams online and to book testing centre spaces for students unable to take the exams remotely.
Around 75% of BPTC exams were completed but far too many students faced difficulties which should never have occurred. The BSB’s staff worked very hard to implement the new arrangements for the exams but we very much regret that many students had a difficult experience both in booking and sitting the exams.
The Board has welcomed the Review by Professor Huxley-Binns and Dr Kumar. It has approved the Executive’s proposed Action Plan and will ensure that the Review’s recommendations are put into effect. The Board has discussed the Action Plan with Professor Huxley-Binns and Dr Kumar and they fully endorse the Plan as meeting the recommendations in their Review. I am pleased that the Review found no failure of governance. The Board is determined to ensure that the BSB learns the lessons for the future. Those lessons will be of great help to the BSB and to future students. We are very grateful to all those who have contributed to this Review and I should like once again to repeat my apology to those who had difficulties last August.”
ENDS
About the reviewers
Professor Rebecca “Becky” Huxley-Binns was appointed Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Education) at the University of Hull in January 2019, having previously held the role of Vice-Provost, Academic Enhancement, at the University of Law.
Prof Huxley-Binns has held a number of academic posts in legal education including Co-Director of the Nottingham Law School Centre for Legal Education at Nottingham Trent University. She was Law Teacher of the Year in 2010 (nominated by students). She is also a member of the UK Teaching Excellence Awards Advisory Panel and was Chair of the UK Quality Assurance Agency Law Subject Benchmark Statement Review Group 2015.
Prof Huxley-Binns has also been a senior examiner for ‘A’ level law, Principal Examiner for Criminal Law for CILEX and an experienced external examiner to University Law Schools.
Dr. Sarabajaya Kumar is an interdisciplinary social science academic, an equalities consultant and a disability activist. She teaches leadership and public policy to international civil servants and civil society leaders at University College London (UCL), and has previously taught at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), the University of Oxford and the Open University.
Her research interests are in accountability, governance, intersectionality, ethical leadership and disability; and her current projects relate to disability equality and artificial intelligence.
A Fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (FRSA), she is also an accredited Executive Coach with extensive experience of coaching and mentoring university academics, grant-makers and social entrepreneurs.
About the BPTC exams
The BSB sets and marks the BPTC exams in Civil and Criminal Litigation and Professional Ethics as centralised assessments and the BPTC providers set and mark the other exams.
Students who were unable to complete their exams in August have now had three subsequent opportunities to do so in October, December and April.
About the Bar Standards Board
The BSB’s mission is to regulate barristers and specialised legal services businesses in England and Wales in the public interest. For more information about what we do visit: http://bit.ly/1gwui8t
Contact: For all media enquiries call: 0207 611 4691 or email [email protected].
