By Neil Trainis

The General Pharmaceutical Council has promised to implement all of the recommendations of a report that examined the regulator’s poor handling of the registration assessment in June last year.

The report by Verita, based on its investigation into the problems surrounding the June 29 exam, the events leading up to it, including the 2021 sittings which were also hindered by delays, and the tendering process for assessment suppliers, found several reasons why problems occurred.

It said the GPhC and exam sittings provider BTL failed to ensure that three venues were set up the night before the assessment which led to delays while IT issues and the inability of exam invigilators to understand the GPhC’s assessment requirements created problems. The report also said “concerns were raised by candidates about the professionalism and behaviour of invigilators.”

The GPhC was accused of putting students through unnecessary stress and anxiety in June when students sitting the assessment at Nottingham University had to wait until late in the afternoon to start the first paper.

Computers did not arrive at the test centre until 11am and students said they were forced to quarantine inside a lecture theatre without any food for hours. Some said they were asked by staff to leave the building late into the evening before finishing the exam because the venue was closing.

The report urged the GPhC to “make it a priority” to ensure its representatives who attend exams are “correctly trained” and “fully briefed about the extent of their role and the correct chain of command.”

It said the GPhC should communicate better internally as well as with students and suppliers and consider setting up a forum with other regulators so lessons can be learned.

It also recommended holding the exam in a smaller number of large venues instead of a larger number of smaller, pop-up venues and consider increasing the number of assessments from two to three or four each year.

The GPhC’s decision to use pop-up venues, the report concluded, was driven by its desire to hold one exam on a single day starting at the same time and minimise travel for candidates.

The report found that of the 113 venues used to carry out June’s assessment, at least one student in 32 centres experienced a delay of over 30 minutes to the start of their exam, all students were delayed by over 30 minutes in five centres and 301 candidates in total were delayed by over half an hour.

In January 2022, BTL took over from Pearson Vue as the exam supplier. The report said although the GPhC’s decision to change supplier “added further risk particularly given the short time” it had with BTL leading up to the June assessment, “it would not be fair to criticise” the regulator for appointing BTL after going through a procurement process.

Verita told Independent Community Pharmacist the GPhC published the executive summary of its report, which was dated October 2022, on February 23 at its council meeting, suggesting pharmacy’s regulator waited four months to disclose its findings. 

The GPhC told ICP the report was “published as part of an overall summary for Council of the delivery of the November assessment, including the pass rate and candidate performance. “

It added: “This was done for the first available Council meeting once the results had been issued and all the information from the November assessment had been collated.”

Verita said its investigation was informed by a large amount of documentation from the GPhC and BTL, including papers relating to the tender process, the regulator's policies, risk registers, reviews of June's assessment and Council papers, BTL's incident reports and the findings from a survey of candidates.

Verita also carried out 21 interviews with GPhC and BTL staff, the Board of Assessors that oversees the standard and integrity of the exam, AlphaPlus, who advised the regulator on setting assessment standards and TeamCo who provided pop-up venues.