Pre-registration pharmacist June exam pass rate falls to 74%

A total of 2,077 pre-registration trainee pharmacists out of 2,811 passed their June 2015 registration assessment, a pass rate of 74%, the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) has announced.

The pass rate is lower than previous years; in June 2013 and June 2014 the pass rates were 78% and 85%, respectively.

Of 2,621 candidates (93% of the total) who sat the assessment for the first time, this included 1,944 community candidates (69% of the total), with a pass rate of 71%; and 675 hospital candidates (24% of the total), with a pass rate of 91%.

There were 116 candidates who sat the assessment for a second time, and 74 who sat it for the third time. Pre-registration trainees can take the assessment a maximum of three times. The next registration assessment will be in September 2015.

The GPhC said: “In setting the paper, the board [of assessors] ensures that all questions are quality assured and matched to the syllabus before they are included in a paper. The board evaluates the sitting after each assessment. It does so by analysing each individual question to ensure they were robust and fair, and in doing so looks at the performance of each question before deciding how to allocate marks.”

This month, the British Pharmaceutical Students’ Association (BPSA) called for changes to be made in how future pharmacists are assessed, after hundreds of trainees complained about the June 2015 registration assessment.

A spokesperson for the regulator says: “We don’t make copies of the assessment papers public.”