England Eases Law Exam After Discrimination Complaints

These moves have been criticized by a wide range of voices, including a number of people from minority groups themselves, for lowering the bar and damaging the prospects of the very students they claim to protect.

Woke Education Controversies

Education has not had a good run of late, particularly at the tertiary level. In the UK, polling suggests a third of Britons now see higher education as not worth the time and money, up from 15% in 2005. The story is much the same in the US, where the prestige of colleges and universities is in sharp decline.

The recent case of Jason Arday became a lightning rod for much of this sentiment, with many critics seeing it as evidence of the rot at the heart of once-great educational establishments.

Arday was a black professor and diversity icon at Cambridge in England who was accused of plagiarism, fabricating research and making exaggerated claims about his achievements.

Aside from the fact that Arday rose to such prominence on remarkably thin credentials, the defensive response from academics was perhaps even more corrosive to the prestige of college education.

For instance, some suggested it was actually Cambridge's fault that Arday had lied on his resume. Meanwhile, anti-racism campaigners like Ibram X. Kendi compared criticisms of Arday to the actions of a "lynch mob", saying his accusers subsequently tried to "wash their hands of the blood".

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These positions received significant pushback, with the American academic John McWhorter criticizing Kendi for thinking that "Blackness exempts one" from the usual measures of academic standards, such as "amassing data, drawing connections, and presenting novel insights".

The episode did little to reassure critics, and can hardly have helped the public's already jaundiced view of higher education.

Academic Integrity

In this context, lowering the bar on law exams is likely to be seen as another example of academic integrity being sacrificed in the name of diversity, even though the case does not directly involve universities.

The Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE), introduced in 2021 to replace the Legal Practice Course with a centralized assessment, must be passed by solicitors in England and Wales before they can be admitted to the roll.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has now said it will overhaul part of the exam, cutting the number of questions without changing the time allowed.

The regulator said it made the changes after candidates said the exam "can feel rushed and pressurised in terms of the amount of time allowed to answer a question".

Hundreds of trainees signed a petition last year warning that the "disproportionately challenging" exams favored "certain backgrounds and learning styles".

According to The Telegraph, they said the difficulty of the exams risked causing a "lack of diversity" in the legal profession.

A History of Complaints

This is not the first time the SQE has faced scrutiny. An anonymous whistleblower has raised concerns about opaque marking and appeals processes, among other issues, while 175 candidates were wrongly told in 2024 that they had failed.

Confidence among candidates is also plummeting, according to an SRA study published in December 2025, while a National Junior Lawyers Division survey found that 80% of respondents believed the SQE was not fit for purpose. That survey has drawn criticism, however, both for its small number of responses and the possibility of bias arising from its opt-in nature.

The SRA has defended the exam, while assessment provider Kaplan has argued that the two-paper test is subject to "rigorous quality assurance".

To demonstrate its commitment to transparency, Kaplan published an analysis of data from exam sittings undertaken by 30,000 candidates in 50 countries between 2021 and 2025.

All this suggests that scrutiny of the quality of a relatively new exam is entirely fair, if only to reassure students and the public that it is fit for purpose.

Tweaking an exam is not inherently a problem, especially one this new, and this significant to the workings of a nation's legal system.

Racist Exams?

But the fact that students find an exam too difficult is not, in itself, reason enough to make it easier. Exams for professions such as solicitors, doctors and attorneys need to hold candidates to a high standard to ensure minimum competence, and pass rates below 50% are not uncommon in these fields.

Equally, once diversity requirements enter the equation, there is a danger that decisions come to rest on motives that appear egalitarian but which many see as condescending, even racist.

In New York, for instance, the requirement that high school students pass a series of standardized tests known as the Regents exams is being phased out. One member of the Board of Regents, Felicia Thomas-Williams, argued that this would not "dumb down" education, but rather assess students on their strengths.

"You don't assess a fish on climbing a tree because fish can't climb trees", Thomas-Williams said, referring to a cartoon on education reform showing different animals being asked to climb a tree.

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As one commentator noted, asking a student to read or take a math test is hardly comparable to asking a fish to climb a tree, while McWhorter weighed in again to argue that Thomas-Williams and her ilk genuinely believe that "being good at tests (close thinking and linear reasoning) is 'white'".

An op-ed published on 16 September by the New York Times highlighted the absurd logic underpinning arguments for lowering standards, or scrapping them altogether.

The piece defended the University of California's (UC) decision to end standardized admissions tests for applicants to its campuses.

In the same paragraph, the author, Miriam Pawel, argues that UC has maintained its commitment to "increase access without sacrificing excellence", even while noting that some of its students "may struggle with basic math".

Explanations Besides Race

All this goes to show that the underperformance of some minorities in exams, relative to white students, is not an argument for making exams easier, or scrapping them altogether.

It means asking why these students are underperforming, and addressing the root causes.

Returning to the SQE, Kaplan's 2026 analysis points to one possible driver of variation across ethnicity: the quality of the university and degree a candidate holds, which Kaplan found to have a significant impact on results.

Another possibility is that English language proficiency plays a meaningful role, given that the test is taken by students in 50 different countries. Were the results confined to students sitting the exam within England, would the same ethnic variations persist?

The reflex to reduce everything to race and ethnicity means alternative explanations are overlooked, and exams are adjusted without the underlying cause ever being addressed.

Rather than exercising reasoned judgment, exams are simply labeled racist, an assertion that academics like McWhorter argue is itself discriminatory against minority students, and will fail them in the long run.