Short answer: SQE1 pass rates have ranged from 41% (July 2025) to 56% (January 2024 and January 2025). The most recent published sitting, January 2026, was 53% overall and 58% for first-attempt candidates, with 62% passing FLK1 and 57% passing FLK2. FLK1 has had the higher pass rate in every one of the nine sittings. The pass mark has been a scaled score of 300 out of 500 since January 2024; for the four sittings before that the SRA published raw pass marks of 52% to 57%. Every figure on this page is taken from the SRA's own statistical reports, read on 20 September 2026, and the July 2026 sitting will be added when the SRA publishes its report in October.
If you have just received a result and want to know what your scaled score and quintile mean, read SQE1 results explained. If you did not pass, the resit guide and the January 2027 resit plan start from the result you have. This page is the reference the other posts point to: the numbers, where they come from, and what they do and do not tell you.
Every SQE1 sitting, from the SRA's statistical reports
"Candidates" is the number of graded candidates who sat both FLK1 and FLK2 in that sitting. "Overall" is the SQE1 pass rate for all of them, resitters included; "first attempt" counts only candidates sitting for the first time. The FLK1 and FLK2 columns are the pass rates for everyone graded on that paper. The SRA rounds every rate to a whole percentage.
| Sitting | Candidates | Overall | First attempt | FLK1 | FLK2 | Pass mark |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| November 2021 | 1,073 | 53% | 53% (all were first attempts) | 67% | 54% | 57% FLK1, 56% FLK2 (raw) |
| July 2022 | 1,829 | 53% | 55% | 64% | 55% | 56% FLK1, 55% FLK2 (raw) |
| January 2023 | 3,031 | 51% | 54% | 59% | 56% | 57% FLK1, 56% FLK2 (raw) |
| July 2023 | 3,475 | 53% | 56% | 66% | 58% | 53% FLK1, 52% FLK2 (raw) |
| January 2024 | 6,061 | 56% | 59% | 63% | 61% | 300 scaled |
| July 2024 | 5,006 | 44% | 48% | 55% | 50% | 300 scaled |
| January 2025 | 6,718 | 56% | 60% | 64% | 61% | 300 scaled |
| July 2025 | 5,851 | 41% | 46% | 51% | 48% | 300 scaled |
| January 2026 | 7,863 | 53% | 58% | 62% | 57% | 300 scaled |
| July 2026 | Results issued 8 September 2026; statistical report due by mid-October | 300 scaled |
Source: the SRA's SQE1 statistical reports for each sitting on sqe.sra.org.uk. From January 2025 the SRA also reports candidates who booked but did not sit: 64 in January 2025, 45 in July 2025 and 55 in January 2026. They are excluded from the pass rates above, as the SRA excludes them.
The earlier version of this page carried figures that did not match the reports, so a note on method: each number above was read from the report for that sitting on 20 September 2026, and nothing has been estimated or carried forward.
Three patterns that hold in every sitting
Since 2024, July has been harder to pass than January. The two lowest pass rates on record are July 2024 (44%) and July 2025 (41%); the January sittings either side of them were 56%, 56% and 53%. Before 2024 the two halves of the year were close, with every sitting between 51% and 53%, and July 2023 actually edged January 2023. The SRA has not published a reason for the recent July dips. The candidate mix is the usual explanation: the July cohort carries more resitters from the January sitting, and the first-attempt rate also dips in July, from 60% in January 2025 to 46% in July 2025, so the difference is not only resitters.
FLK1 has the higher pass rate every time. The gap has run from 2 points (January 2024) to 13 points (November 2021), and was 5 points in January 2026. FLK2 carries property practice, wills, trusts, land, solicitors accounts and both criminal subjects, and the hardest subjects ranking explains why that combination costs marks. The mean scaled scores tell the same story: in January 2026 the FLK1 mean was 311.2 and the FLK2 mean 304.3, both above the 300 pass mark, with medians of 319 and 312.
First-attempt candidates pass at a higher rate than the whole cohort. The first-attempt rate has been 2 to 5 points above the overall rate in every sitting since July 2022, and the gap has widened as the resitting population has grown. Read the resit section below before you turn that into a resit pass rate.
The SQE1 pass mark
The SRA sets a separate pass mark for FLK1 and FLK2 in every sitting, decided by its Assessment Board after the exam with reference to the difficulty of that sitting's questions, so that the standard stays constant even though the papers differ. It is a criterion standard, not a quota: there is no fixed percentage of candidates who pass.
For the first four sittings the SRA published the pass mark as a raw percentage: 57% and 56% in November 2021, 56% and 55% in July 2022, 57% and 56% in January 2023, and 53% and 52% in July 2023 (FLK1 then FLK2). From January 2024 every report gives the pass mark as a scaled score of 300 out of 500, and the raw percentage behind it is no longer published. The scaled score is designed so that 300 always represents the same standard; a harder paper needs fewer raw marks to reach it.
How many questions do you need to get right? The SRA no longer says, and the honest answer is that it moves with each paper. The last published raw marks were between 52% and 57%. On the 180-question papers used until July 2026 that would have meant roughly 94 to 103 correct answers; on the 170-question papers from January 2027 the same range would be roughly 88 to 97. Treat those as a planning range, not a target: aim to score consistently above 60% on full-length mocks, because the mark you need is set after you sit.
The scaled scores also show how narrow the margins are. In January 2026, 457 FLK1 candidates and 439 FLK2 candidates scored in the 291 to 300 band, the band that ends at the pass mark and the most crowded band under it in each paper. A handful of questions separated most of them from a pass.
What the reports say about resitters
The sitting reports do not publish a resit pass rate. What they publish is the overall rate and the first-attempt rate, and the difference between them is driven entirely by candidates on their second or third attempt.
Take January 2026. The 7,863 candidates who sat both papers passed at 53%, and the 6,760 first-attempt candidates passed at 58%. That leaves 1,103 resitters, and the arithmetic puts their pass rate somewhere around one in five, though the SRA's rounding to whole percentages makes the exact figure uncertain. The same calculation for July 2025 (5,851 candidates at 41%, 4,736 first-attempt candidates at 46%) also lands well below the first-attempt rate. Whatever the precise number, the pattern is consistent: a resit without a changed approach is a poor bet, which is why the resit guide is built around diagnosing the first attempt rather than repeating it.
The SRA's annual reports, which combine sittings, give resit performance in more detail, and its report on apprentice performance (published in October 2025) covers graduate and non-graduate apprentices separately.
Who passes: the first-attempt breakdown
Each report breaks down first-attempt candidates by the diversity data collected at registration. The two most recent sittings show the same gaps.
| Group (first attempt) | January 2026 SQE1 pass rate | July 2025 SQE1 pass rate |
|---|---|---|
| Undergraduate degree: first | 79% | 67% |
| Undergraduate degree: 2:1 | 57% | 46% |
| Undergraduate degree: 2:2 | 20% | 19% |
| Aged 16 to 24 | 62% | 48% |
| Aged 25 to 34 | 57% | 47% |
| Aged 35 to 44 | 41% | 38% |
| Not a qualified lawyer | 61% | 47% |
| Already a qualified lawyer (elsewhere) | 47% | 42% |
| First language English | 62% | 48% |
| First language other | 46% | 41% |
| White | 67% | 55% |
| Asian or Asian British | 47% | 39% |
| Black or Black British | 38% | 28% |
| Independent or fee-paying school | 71% | 56% |
| State school, non-selective | 57% | 44% |
| Schooled outside the UK | 50% | 43% |
Two things stand out for anyone planning their own preparation. Degree classification is the strongest predictor in the tables: first-class graduates passed at four times the rate of 2:2 graduates in January 2026. And qualified lawyers from other jurisdictions passed at a lower rate than candidates who were not yet lawyers, in both sittings, which is why the guide for internationally qualified lawyers treats SQE1 as an exam to be prepared for from scratch rather than a formality. The SRA published a separate report on candidate characteristics and the factors that influence scores in November 2025, alongside the sitting reports.
Pass rates by provider: what is published, and what is not
The SRA does not publish pass rates by training provider, and none of the figures providers quote can be checked against the reports above. They also count different things. BARBRI's 62% for July 2025 counts only candidates who completed at least 90% of its course. QLTS School's 94% counts only those who completed 25 or more mocks, and dates from July 2023. The University of Law's 76% for January 2026 is a first-attempt figure drawn from more than 2,000 survey responses. BPP's "80%" does not state a denominator. The cheapest courses comparison lists each claim next to its price; the honest summary is that no provider figure is comparable with another, or with the SRA's 53%.
What this means for January 2027
January 2027 is the first sitting in the new format: 170 questions a paper in two sessions of 85, with fixed subject groups in each session. The blueprint, the question style and the standard-setting method are unchanged, so there is no reason to expect the pass mark to behave differently; the SRA describes the change as the first in a series of improvements to the assessment. Results for January 2027 are due on 9 March 2027, according to the SRA's assessment dates page; the dates and deadlines guide has the full calendar.
If the pattern of the last four years holds, three things follow. First-attempt candidates who sit in January have passed at 58% to 60% in each of the last three January sittings, so a first attempt in January with proper preparation is the best odds the exam offers. FLK2 will decide more results than FLK1, so the FLK2 subjects deserve more than half of your time. And the margin is thin: the largest group of failing candidates in January 2026 sat within ten scaled points of the line, which is a handful of questions across 170. The mock score decoder explains how to tell whether your practice scores put you on the right side of it, and SQE1 Prep's mocks score you by session in the new format so the check is a real one. For the broader question of how hard the exam is, the difficulty guide puts these rates in context.
Update log
- 20 September 2026: page rebuilt from the SRA's statistical reports for all nine sittings; it replaces the earlier "SQE1 pass rates 2025" page, which carried unsourced figures.
- July 2026: results were issued to candidates on 8 September 2026; the SRA says the statistical report will be published by the middle of October 2026, and the table above will be updated the day it appears.
