The City Law School has broken ranks with other training providers and revealed the proportion of its students who pass the Legal Practice Course.

In 2018-19, the London-based law school had a pass rate of 55%, with 78 of its 143 postgraduate students successfully completing the Legal Practice Course. Of those, 22 received a distinction, 42 received a commendation and 14 received a pass. The remaining 65 did not pass the course but are entitled to re-sit the relevant exams. The pass rate for 2017-18 was also 55%, while 52% of students passed the course in 2016-17.

Anonymised pass rate figures for the LPC - which range from 29% to 100% - appear in the SRA’s quality assurance report for September 2017 - August 2018. However, the regulator has refused to reveal the pass rates of individual universities and, so far, only the City Law School has disclosed the information. The largest training providers, BPP and the University of Law, refused to disclose the data when approached by the Gazette. 

Explaining the decision not to release pass rates, Julie Brannan, director of education and training at the SRA, told the Gazette: ‘It is not appropriate to publish the names of institutions. Institutions set and mark their own assessments so publishing names alongside specific data could create pressures on providers which might impact standards.’ She said this will no longer be the case under the upcoming Solicitors Qualifying Examination, where all candidates will sit the same centrally marked assessments.

The Junior Lawyers Division urged the SRA to release the data ‘before the next intake of students part with their money’.