The General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) discussed delivering the registration exam calculations paper as an AI-written test “to be taken at a time selected by the candidate” in its last council meeting, minutes published yesterday (February 17) revealed.
During the meeting, the committee considered concerns “on the timing of the calculations paper, specifically, stakeholders had considered that this paper could be taken before the end of year five”.
“Some candidates…had not understood the significance of the calculations until they reached their foundation year” – “a candidate who was unable to do the calculations could not become a pharmacist,” it added.
Read more: BREAKING: November registration exam pass rate plummets to 58%
“The calculations paper could be delivered as an on-demand paper to be taken at a time selected by the candidate,” the committee suggested.
“This would require an expansion of the GPhC’s question bank by approximately 4,000,” it said.
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But it added that this “could be achieved using AI to clone questions, essentially changing the figures but keeping the calculations the same”.
“Further ideas including sharing resources with other on-demand providers, assessments carried out online, at home or at the university, and online practice papers were all possible but required exploratory work,” it said.
“Shift in societal thinking”
The committee also requested “more work” to explore “the impact on trainees of high-stakes assessments held at the end of training”.
“A shift in societal thinking had moved towards consideration of whether it was acceptable or necessary to put people through these types of processes,” it said.
“A long-term objective could be set to ensure that the quality assurance of training was at a standard that negated the need for the assessment in the future,” it added.
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The GPhC planned for “further workshops and consultation” on changes to the registration exam this month, “an options paper for council in April with the proposal to council following in July” ahead of a “public consultation throughout September to November.
“It was confirmed that no changes would be made to the registration assessment prior to 2026,” it said.
Plummeting pass rates
Meanwhile, the meeting minutes also revealed that the most recent registration assessment sitting in November “involved the largest number of candidates undertaking the Autumn sitting to date”.
“It was believed that the later date and slightly higher fail rate seen in the June sitting were responsible for the higher number of candidates,” the papers said.
Read more: UPDATED: June registration exam pass rate drops to 75%
At the time, the GPhC said that the exam’s overall pass rate was “one of the lower [it had] seen”.
Just 58% of the 1,146 candidates who sat the registration exam passed, compared to 66% the previous year.
