The General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) will monitor three universities’ registration assessment performance after seeing low pass rates for students.

The Pharmaceutical Journal reported that the universities are the University of Hertfordshire, University of Lincoln and University of Portsmouth.

A report on the exam, included in papers prepared for the GPhC’s council meeting on 12 October 2023, said that 2,805 candidates sat the assessment in June 2023, with a pass rate of 76.6%.

The regulator said this was “comparable to the pass rates for previous assessments taken in the summer, when most candidates sit the assessment at the end of their foundation training year”.

However, the report noted that “three schools of pharmacy have had lower pass rates than other institutions”, with the GPhC identifying the University of Hertfordshire, University of Lincoln and University of Portsmouth as “a cause for concern”.

 

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Papers for the GPhC’s council meeting on 12 October 2023 said:

“In the year since the June 2022 sitting, we have engaged with three schools whose pass rate was concerningly low.”

“All three have been subject to re-accreditation, all three re-accreditation reports are available publicly on the GPhC’s website and a full account of the actions taken will be presented to the Quality and Performance Assurance Committee. 

“At present, data is presented to Council as a snapshot after each sitting. We intend to develop this to produce a more comprehensive report and analysis which details trends over a period of time from sitting to sitting.

“This will provide a more useful way of identifying whether the interventions we are making are having the desired effect and whether differences in pass rate are part of a more systemic issue.”

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