SRA and Kaplan Assessments Symposium 2025

The annual SQE Symposium in March 2025, hosted by Kaplan Assessments, brought together leading legal and other assessment professionals, and practitioners to explore key issues surrounding high stakes assessments.

Discussions focused on innovative assessment design, test equating, accessibility under the Equality Act, and strategies to enhance candidate readiness. Here are the key highlights and insights from the sessions, offering practical steps to advance legal assessment practices.

The need for a comprehensive approach to legal assessment

The SQE assesses candidates at the Solicitor Day One standard. However, ensuring valid, transparent, and equitable assessments in a high-stakes professional environment presents challenges, including assessing ethics, accessibility, and candidate engagement. The symposium addressed these critical areas to maintain the credibility and fairness of professional assessments.

Session highlights

1. Assessing ethics and professional conduct in high-stakes contexts

Ethics and professional conduct underpins professional practice across industries. A panel of assessment experts and regulators examined how ethical conduct is assessed in law, medicine, and accountancy.

Key takeaways:

• Integrated ethics assessment: The SQE embeds ethics and professional conduct into SQE1 and SQE2, reflecting real-world practice where ethical dilemmas must be identified and resolved in context.
• Challenges in measuring ethics: Assessments must move beyond simplistic "right or wrong" approaches to capture the complexity of ethical decision-making.
• Lessons from other professions: Fields like medicine use situational judgment tests and portfolios to assess professionalism. In accountancy, ethical development is embedded across the student journey, often through a combination of assessments, mentoring, and reflective practice.

2. Demystifying test equating

Dr. Matt Homer from the University of Leeds provided an insightful overview of test equating, focusing on Item Response Theory models.

Key takeaways:

• Ensuring fairness: Test equating ensures different exam versions maintain a consistent standard, placing all candidates’ results on a common measurement scale.
• The role of anchor items: Strategically selected common questions link different test versions.
• Challenges: The effectiveness of equating depends on the quality and representativeness of anchor items.

3. Accessibility and the Equality Act

Jackie Panter, Head of Equality and Quality at Kaplan Assessments, explored how legal assessments can be both inclusive and compliant with the Equality Act.

Key takeaways:

• Reasonable adjustments: Providing appropriate adjustments ensure candidates with disabilities can demonstrate their legal knowledge and legal skills without disadvantage.
• Beyond compliance: Accessibility is not just a legal requirement but a commitment to fairness and equity in the assessment process.
• Proactive inclusion: Inclusive practices should be embedded in assessments from the outset rather than as retrofitted solutions.

4. Supporting candidates in preparing for the SQE

The SRA and Kaplan Assessments Head of Stakeholder Engagement, Yiannis Chrysanthou, discussed how to enhance candidates' understanding of the SQE, with a focus on reducing differential outcomes.

Key takeaways:

• Improving assessment literacy: Candidates benefit from clear explanations of test structures, marking criteria and expectations.
• Practical resources: Having more resources providing practical help to increase academic skills can improve preparedness.
• Tailored support: Many candidates, including apprentices and international candidates, require structured resources to bridge knowledge gaps.

The SQE Symposium 2025 reinforced the value of collaboration among educators, regulators, and assessment specialists.