What could be more uplifting for debt-laden students than a prominent Conservative denouncing them as ‘snowflakes’ in a national newspaper. So it is fortuitous indeed that former home secretary Suella Braverman has chosen to add her penn’orth to the Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE) reform debate.
As the Gazette has reported, a change.org petition was launched on 24 July by a trainee solicitor who says the SQE has taken a severe toll on their mental, financial and physical wellbeing. Nearly 800 people had signed it by Wednesday this week, signalling support for a ‘thorough review of the SQE’s content and structure’.
An introductory paragraph – which states the petition’s author found the SQE ‘disproportionately challenging’ – inspired Braverman to write a column in the Daily Telegraph.
Braverman appears to have misrepresented the petition, at least in part. Nowhere does the petitioner say the SQE is ‘too hard’. Yet one cannot doubt the media appeal of rhetoric proclaiming that the ‘snowflake sensibility’ has ‘infected even the corridors of legal ambition’.
Ms Braverman is correct that the SQE should be a rigorous test. Alas, her arguments might have carried more weight had they not been illustrated online with a large stock image of a gavel.
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