I can understand why this concerns people.
I haven’t got an issue with pass rates being low - I am happy for there to be a tough assessment that creates high standards to enter the industry. We see similar pass rates for other regulated industries for their professional qualifications and no one really has the same concerns about them.
However, I do have a problem with the assessments themselves, which are causing disproportionate pass rates between certain groups of candidates.
With some fairly basic changes to how the assessments are applied and funded, the issues around the disparity in performance could be mitigated.
We also need to stop trying to assess people to an NQ standard before they have often even done any qualifying work experience. I’d prefer SQE1 to be a standard similar to the LPC, and SQE2 to be the NQ standard assessment, but that it can only be sat once you have accumulated 18 months of QWE.