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Tag Archives: equality
Will the new proposed Bar Course Aptitude Test be fair to aspiring barristers?
The completion of the training of barristers is a genuine regulatory concern of the Bar Standards Board (BSB). According to recent statistics, the number of students who want to become barristers shows little sign of diminishing with 3,100 applicants to the Bar Professional Training Course (BTPC) in 2010/2011 and 3,016 in 2011/2012. There is a growing level of concern at the Bar and amongst law students that the rising demand for the BPTC is not reflected by rising availability of pupillages, coupled with increasing fees for the Bar Professional Training Course (BPTC). BPP Law School, one of the main providers of the BPTC, recently announced an increase in fees by five per cent for September 2012 to £16,540. It is hoped that introduction of the Bar Course Aptitude Test (BCAT) will introduce fairness, by decreasing the number of law students who fail the BPTC, and the public consultation until 29 February 2012 is encouraged to see if this will be the case.
The BSB proposes that, in addition to existing entry requirements as specified in the Bar Training Regulations, all BPTC students should attain a minimum pass threshold on the BCAT, which has been carefully developed and piloted specifically for this purpose. It is proposed that this implementation of the BCAT by Pearson Vue should commence with the cohort of candidates applying from November 2012 to start the course in September 2013. Whatever is proposed by the Bar Standards Board, it will be for the Legal Services Board to determine whether the proposal may be implemented.
The BCAT is based on the established and recognised Watson Glaser Critical Thinking Test which is used by some law firms in recruitment assessment days and by the Graduate Management Admissions Council. The Wood Review of the BPTC’s predecessor, the BVC, had been commissioned by the BSB with a Working Group chaired by Derek Wood QC, and published in July 2008. Learners will now be able to take the BCAT at any stage of their education or career, including after applying for the BPTC. The requirement will be that applicants must have scored the threshold pass before enrolling on the course, similar to the current English language rule and other entry requirements. It is staggering that, despite the fact that no socioeconomic data in the pilot were collected, the Bar Standards Board find that the test will not any effect, adverse or otherwise, on socioeconomic factors of enrolment on the BPTC.
Students in the UK are already prone to be most over-assessed in Europe, and it is an embarrassment to our educational system that academic competences will not have been identified by other means by the time a learner sits the test. The cost of taking the test will be a consideration for some learners at a time when some may in future be coping with university course fees. Unfortunately there is a slightly higher cost of taking the test for international students due to higher cost to Pearson Vue of testing and processing results overseas. The BSB has apparently explored the chance of a reduction with Pearson Vue but it has been confirmed that this cost is non-movable.
Certainly the equality and diversity impact assessment will have to be evaluated critically. For example, while no significant differences were found for age, or disability, statistically significant but small differences were found for gender and primary language. Indeed, Pearson Vue intend to mitigate against the effects of disability, indeed as they are obliged to under current equality legislation, through “reasonable adjustments” at test centres. The BSB will need to ensure that these are enforced rigorously, as anecdotal reports on the success of implementation by legal recruiters have been unimpressive for training contract applications.
A legal secretary commented on Twitter today that diversity would be ensured according to ‘how easy is it to pay for coaching to pass’. Formal education is currently expensive, and it is unlikely that educational providers might draw attention to the finding in the report that ‘coaching can have a small effect’, and indeed It is the view of the Bar Standards Board that it is more important to ensure fairness by allowing an unlimited number of re-sits, as the risk of applicants being coached sufficiently to achieve a pass is limited.
Views of current BPTC towards the proposed BCAT are mixed, but few current students are enthusiastic about what it will achieve. One current BPTC student ‘tweeted’, ‘I did LNAT and failed. According to that I shouldn’t have done law at uni, or anything further. So sceptical at aptitude tests.’
It is hugely impressive that the BSB have put produced such an excellent report into the development of the BCAT which is now open to consultation until 29 February 2012. It will be very interesting to see how the profession responds. The Law Society has already commenced investigations into a similar LPC aptitude test, and will undoubtedly follow the progress of the BSB BCAT with enormous interest.
BPP Legal Awareness Society – arrangements from January 2012
Our meetings will be held at the BPP Law School in Holborn from January 2012.
The purpose of this Society will continue to promote the importance of law and regulation in the function of all businesses including corporates.
I hope you may continue to support our Society. Details of forthcoming meetings will be posted soon both here on this blog and the official site for BPP students here. They will cover, as usual, the range of traditional practice areas in international corporate law. The Society, run by BPP students, will continue to emphasise the critical importance of diversity, equality and inclusivity for disabled law students. We are proud to do so.
LegalAware podcast 1: Ataxia and welfare benefit cuts
Welcome to the first ever LegalAware podcast. I am sorry for the sound quality. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, it’s recorded on a very busy Regents Park Road, which can be busier than the #m6. Secondly, I am still getting used to the #yeti microphone and Audacity. Notwithstanding these problem, Alan (@AlanROYGBIV) joins me for a explanation of the neurological condition of ataxia, which we both have, what Ataxia UK is, and how the welfare benefit cuts are a tragedy for society, including disabled citizens like us.
This is no time for a psychodrama
One thing that I am sure that the Sky party at my conference was high on was gossip. Reporters such as Nick Robinson, Laura Kuenssberg and Adam Boulton would have been interested in the psychodynamics of the relationship between David Miliband and Ed Miliband. There’s no hiding the fact that the Ed supporters were jubilant. At best, Ed Miliband is ‘Red Ed’, despite the fact that most experienced political journalists converge on the notion that Ed is more right-wing than people first imagine, and likewise David is more left-wing than you would expect. Whatever purported media-zappy ‘rifts’, this is nothing compared to Brown and Blair, and while the idea of a Mandy media seems cute, no pseudo-Machiavellian candidates have emerged from the wings.
I met Audrey outside the conference centre aka Starbucks yesterday. A very nice lady from Kent who’s Labour (and socialist) through-and-through. She had received a setback originally that John O’Donnell was not able to stand, but quickly Her badges on her lapelle though gave away her loyalties, quite possibly.
The sore message for the reporters that we have a strong history in the Unions, that we are proud of. Ed Miliband was backed by his unions, but so were the other candidates. Welcome to the Labour Party sunshine! The thing is Ed and David are likely to wish to destigmatise membership of the Unions, and emphasise how the Unions serve as the important interface between workers and their management. This is a critical issue in modern corporate governance, and anyone who knows the history of this save for the psychodrama headline grabbing antics of Lord Myners, will know that modern English corporate governance introduced non-executive directors for that reason.
Sure, there are members of my party who are jubilant, and really pleased that Ed won. I have previously set out my reasons for doing so. If David Miliband wishes to leave the Shadow Cabinet, that is his decision, and there is no doubt he could get a lucrative job elsewhere, such as in Europe. Others have tweeted to me this is a personal decision that is essentially a personal decision as well as one for our party; it’s up-to-him to decide. Ed Miliband has made his views known, and you can’t say fairer than that.
Meanwhile, Ed Miliband will be seeking to govern the country as well as the Party (and the Unions). As Tim Horton, Research Director for the Fabian Society, has advised, major policy issues await for the rejuvenated Labour Party, in an article “How to win on values”. These issues include immigration, benefit fraud, localism and diversity in public services. However, there is no doubt that Ed will wish to seek out some clues as to his response to the banking crisis, the future of banking regulation, poverty, inequality, and the unions, if his campaign is anything to do by.
Insecurity and fairness
The Fabians discussed this morning insecurity and inequality.
Whilst these are huge topics, I was impressed with the amount of breadth and depth of the discussion.
Whatever the economic solution to the global financial crisis is, and whether it will work in this country, we still have an on-going problem that has existed for the whole of this century in England.
The Fabian meeting was a starting-point for discussing some of these issues, this morning at breakfast.
Politically, the issue has been thrust to the front of the Labour agenda through the Fabian Society. Many blame Labour for not doing anything over the banking crisis, as regards the huge salaries of certain CEOs of banks. Economists on the whole appear to believe that the extra revenue that would have be gained from a high rate of taxing the bankers would not make a massive amount to the revenue of the Governnment. At the other end of the scale, despite the welfare state, there are still people living in relative poverty.
I suppose part of the problem for me is that the welfare state is not meant to be simply a desperate measure for those who’ve fallen off the edge of the cliff. It should support the successful, as indeed the NHS does support the acute medical care of all the Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet. Labour’s inequality divide, we all know, got massively worse under Blair and Brown, and this is not a record that socialists should be proud of. The recent experience of the Swedes, possibly, is that socialism is not seen as a relevant solution in this global modern economy. Taking this in its wider context, socialism should be for the good times as well as the bad, but the Conservatives attempt to shatter this notion through their repetitive chant that ‘we always fix the broken economy by Labour’.
Fairness is incredibly difficult to define. I have only seen attempts by the Law Lords in cases concerning grounds of judicial review, such as legitimate expectation or procedural impropriety. I actually have never seen it discussed at length in relation to a more obvious candidate, the Human Rights Act. Of course, we are yet to see how the case law of the Equality Act will develop. Insecurity, I sensed, was likely to be exacerbated when voters felt that circumstances were out of their control, akin to learned helplessness in depression. There are two scenarios I can immediately think of where this lack of predictability in events might lead to insecurity; the increasing globalisation of the jobs market (and immigration), and (b) the global financial crisis. Gillian Duffy, and many like her, may feel insecure about her family’s jobs, but in fairness to her (pardon the pun), in law there might be a proportional check on the freedom of movement – and that is a right to work in your domestic country – however contentious that would be.
Tony Blair – The Journey : A failure to tackle inequality is a dangerous precedent for Labour
Actually, reading a book with such a careful index is like reading the abstract of a scientific paper. You can easily miss out the best bits, and get such a soupçon that you totally miss out on the real flavour. This could be the detriment of understanding Tony Blair, or possibly be an advantage. Despite my protestations which principally come from the Andrew Marr interview on the BBC, I went into the journey with an open mind, I hope..
The thing I instantly liked about “The Journey” is that it is easy to underestimate the nadir from which Labour actually came at the height of Margaret Thatcher’s popularity. I remember in my 20s what a disaster the Conservatives had become internally, and how they had virtually imploded on the issue of Europe (a topic which still threatens their infrastructure today). So, it was for me as Blair described indeed, having lived through the experience that Tony Blair talks about. I feel that I can actually empathise with his account, even though I have zero emotional intelligence, arguably, myself.
I had got used to defeat myself, I didn’t expect Blair to win, when I was at the age of 23, having experienced so many defeats in the past for me during the Thatcher generation. Quite early on in the book, Tony Blair seems to have an acknowledgement of not making his writing too self-congratulatory. Whether he’s actually succeeded on this I feel is a very tough call. His prosaic style varies from being candid emotionally, to being rather unemotional, as if he is talking in ‘legal speak’. However, the sense of excitement is there, as well as some sense of expectation management.
Some things in the book are pretty predictable. For example, the glowing reference of Alastair Campbell shines through. However, I find Blair very unclear on obvious certain failures of domestic policy. For example, I don’t feel that Tony Blair really tackles head-on the equality (inequality) divide. An epiphenomenon of this is that neither ‘poverty’ or ‘inequality’ are words are in the index, which I am sure that Tony Blair didn’t compile. There is an appearance of lip service to the Fabian Society, on a somewhat academic footing, with a surprising acknowledgement of Tony Benn and Tony Crossland at the University of Oxford. Blair seems to identify the problem:
“Once so altered, [Benn and Crossland] became staunch advocates of social action and of the party of the trade unions and the working class whose lives had to be liberated from the conditions of poor housing, poor education and poor health care.”
Critically, there is no explanation – or even an attempt at an explanation – of whether improvements in social indequality were achieved. However, it does seem that the culture of Blair, with the emphasis on September 11th, Gordon Brown, Alastair Campbell Iraq and Islam, seems to have somewhat overshadowed all this, and this really shows in the book. These topics have been described extensively elsewhere, so I won’t mention them. However what I did find incredibly interesting that a much publicised move was that of Gordon Brown to reduce the capital gains tax to a rate of 15%. Even Blair calls this move by Brown as heralded by politics than any real conviction, so the overwhelming impression for the reader like me is that Gordon Brown deliberately wished to court the city against any notion of anti-business rather than having thought carefully about the social and economic sequelae. Robert Peston has indeed cited this as a reason where the Blair/Brown axis failed, and I agree. Was the Labour government successful on this single issue, irrespective of Iraq or Afghanistan, more school and nurses, etc.? No.
This is a big deal, because parties tend to lose when they systematically alienate groups of people. I noticed this with Margaret Thatcher first of all, but I have latterly felt that Gordon Brown and Tony Blair did this with the working, middle and upper classes. “Somethings got to give” as Marilyn Monroe said, and it must before the next election, in addition to Labour formulating a coherent response to the effect of cuts on the economy and real people.
Is he a great leader? Well, he certainly achieved a lot, but it’s a moot point whether he made his domestic policies so toxic so as to make them rather uninspirational. Thankfully, there are other features of a good leader, such as intelligence, passion, focus, risk-taking and enthusiasm, and you can conceivably argue that Blair had all of these in abundance.
