Bar students' fury at exam cock-up
22 March 2013
The Bar Standards Board (BSB) has admitted it is investigating a "very serious issue" in which exam questions appeared to have been taken directly from a mock exam paper previously given to some students.

Students on the Bar Professional Training Course are understandably up in arms after discovering some of their colleagues seem to have had an unfair advantage. Angry students have told RollOnFriday that a mock paper produced by BPP in 2011 was circulated to some students, but not others, in advance of their BSB Professional Ethics exam. They claim that when students turned the first page many were delighted to discover that several questions had been lifted wholesale from the BPP mock paper. One source told RollOnFriday that 20% of the multiple choice questions and a third of the single answer questions were duplicated. Those left in the dark are not so happy.

How a BSB exam might get written

It is currently unclear whether the inadvertant cheat sheet was circulated by course providers. But however it got about, the BSB is red faced. Simon Thornton-Wood, BSB Head of Education and Training, said they are "aware of this very serious issue and are conducting a thorough investigation. It would be inappropriate to comment further until we have completed this process".

Meanwhile, there was more mock exam fun at the University of Law. The GDL course leader emailed students recently to explain that "due to other events taking place...it will not be possible to set the room in the usual exam layout". Sources tell RollOnFriday that the substitute layout meant they were "squashed like sardines" and that "everyone could read each other's answers". 

A UoL spokesperson said "As it was a mock exam, they were free to choose their own seats and there were enough seats for them to spread themselves out. We have received no complaints from students about seating".

After being frozen and then boiled, maybe students decided it was safer to stick together.