BAR STANDARDS BOARD
2
BAR TRAINING 2022: STATISTICS BY COURSE PROVIDER
Contents
Introduction 3
About the Bar Standards Board 3
About training to become a barrister in England and Wales 3
About this report 4
Course providers 5
Cost of Bar Training courses 6
Enrolments by provider 7
Student results by provider 8
Pass rates by degree classification – full time students who enrolled between July 2020
and October 2020 9
Student Progression 11
Appendices 14
Enrolments 14
BAR STANDARDS BOARD
3
BAR TRAINING 2022: STATISTICS BY COURSE PROVIDER
Introduction
About the Bar Standards Board
The Bar Standards Board (BSB) is the regulatory body for barristers in England and Wales. The
work that we do is governed by the Legal Services Act 2007 as well as a number of other statutes.
Our responsibilities include setting the education and training requirements for becoming a barrister
in England and Wales.
About training to become a barrister in England and Wales
Those seeking to practise as a barrister in England and Wales are required to satisfy the
requirements of three components of training:
• the academic component;
• the vocational component, and
• the pupillage component.
Completing all components should provide a prospective barrister with the knowledge and skills
necessary to meet the requirements of the Professional Statement for Barristers: this describes the
knowledge, skills and attributes that all barristers should have on "day one" of practice at the Bar.
1
To complete the academic component of training, a prospective barrister needs either a law degree,
or a non-law degree and the Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL). The degree needs to be a minimum
of a 2:2 (lower second-class degree).
The vocational component of training is provided via courses run by a number of course providers.
Course providers are authorised by the BSB to deliver vocational training for the Bar through one of
the approved training pathways. The vocational component of training may be offered in a few
different ways:
• a course in one part, which may be full-time over a year or part-time over a longer period;
• a course in two parts, which may involve face-to-face teaching for both parts or may involve
self-study only for one of the parts; and
• a longer course which combines study of the subjects of the vocational component with an
undergraduate degree in law.
Upon passing vocational training and satisfying the requirements of their Inn of Court, prospective
barristers are eligible to be called to the Bar and to undertake the work based component of
training, pupillage.
Prospective barristers have five years following completion of vocational training in which to gain
pupillage (although a waiver extending this period may be granted, and waivers for other parts of
the training pathway may also be granted in some circumstances).
2
1
See https://www.barstandardsboard.org.uk/training-qualification/the-professional-statement.html
2
Further information on training to become a barrister can be found on our website via
https://www.barstandardsboard.org.uk/training-qualification.html
BAR STANDARDS BOARD
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BAR TRAINING 2022: STATISTICS BY COURSE PROVIDER
About this report
This report contains information on enrolment and results on vocational Bar training, and
progression onto pupillage. It is principally aimed at providing prospective students with comparable
information on the different course providers at which they may be considering studying.
Further statistics on overall trends in course fees, enrolment, results, and progression are due to be
published in a separate report, which the BSB intends to publish in 2023, and yearly from that point
onwards.
The BSB does not regulate the grading schemes awarded by each provider, and so the measures
of student results given are those that are directly comparable across providers, with these being:
• The percentage of students that have passed all ten course modules
• The percentage of students who passed all ten modules at the first attempt
• The percentage of students gaining pupillage
The statistics in the report are given by first degree classification, as different course providers have
different student profiles, and disaggregating the data in this way helps to control for this. Statistics
are provided where there are more than 15 students in a respective group (with one exception for
Table 4), as statistics on smaller cohorts may give an unrepresentative picture. In some
circumstances, provider sites with the same parent institution have been grouped together due to
smaller numbers of students at these locations: this is the case for BPP Birmingham, Bristol, and
Leeds; as well as ULaw Bristol, Leeds, Manchester and Nottingham.
Due to the issue of smaller numbers of students at some provider sites, in future reports we aim to
present results for students enrolled during a two-year period. Due to incomplete data this was not
possible for this report.
Data sources
The data used for this report comes principally from the data provided to the BSB by course
providers. Students on Bar training courses are also able to update personal details in their record
directly through the MyBar portal. Data on pupillages comes from information stored at the BSB on
registered pupillages. The report was compiled by the Bar Standards Board Research Team.
Data protection and confidentiality
We take our responsibilities for data protection very seriously and have made every attempt to
ensure that individual students cannot be identified from the data in this publication. We have
adhered to the Anonymisation: managing data protection risk code of practice report from the
Information Commissioner's Office (2012) and applied anonymisation techniques where
appropriate.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the course providers for their cooperation in providing us with data used in this
report.
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BAR TRAINING 2022: STATISTICS BY COURSE PROVIDER
Course providers
The below table gives a breakdown of the different providers of vocational Bar training courses. As
of November 2022, courses were run at 10 different institutions, covering 19 different sites in total.
• Vocational training on the three-step pathway consists of the course taken in one part.
• Vocational training on the four-step pathway consists of the course taken in two parts.
• One provider offers an integrated pathway combining the vocational component with an
undergraduate degree
• Many providers offer an option of providing vocational Bar training as an integral part of an academic
award such as an LLM – this would enable access to a postgraduate master’s loan.
3
Table 1. Vocational Bar training course providers
Provider
Site
Site Code
Courses Offered for 2022/23
Website
BPP
Birmingham, Bristol,
Leeds, London,
Manchester
BPP + site
name
• 3 step-pathway full-time at all sites
• Part-time offered at BPP London
• LLM option offered at all sites
https://www.b
pp.com/
Cardiff
University
-
CAR
• 3-step pathway full-time
• LLM option offered
https://www.c
ardiff.ac.uk/
City Law
School
-
CLS
• 3-step pathway full-time and part-time
• LLM option offered
• Specialist training option offered
https://www.ci
ty.ac.uk/
University of
Hertfordshire
-
HERT
• 3-step pathway full-time
• LLM option offered
https://www.h
erts.ac.uk/
The Inns of
Court College
of Advocacy
-
ICCA
• 3-step pathway full-time
• 4-step pathway
https://www.ic
ca.ac.uk/
Manchester
Metropolitan
University
-
MMU
• 3-step pathway full-time and part-time
• LLM option offered
https://www.m
mu.ac.uk/
Nottingham
Law School
-
NTU
• 3-step pathway full-time
• LLM option offered
https://www.n
tu.ac.uk/
The University
of Law
Birmingham, Bristol,
Leeds, London,
Manchester,
Nottingham
ULaw + site
name
• 3 step-pathway full-time at all sites,
and part-time offered at several sites
• LLM option offered at all sites
https://www.la
w.ac.uk/
University of
the West of
England
-
UWE
• 3-step pathway full-time
• 4-step pathway
• LLM option offered
https://www.u
we.ac.uk/
University of
Northumbria
-
UNN
• 3-step pathway full-time and part time
• 4-step pathway
• LLM option offered
• Also offered as part of undergraduate
degree
https://www.n
orthumbria.ac.
uk/
3
See https://www.gov.uk/masters-loan
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BAR TRAINING 2022: STATISTICS BY COURSE PROVIDER
Cost of Bar Training courses
Table 2 below shows the cost of training for the Bar. Details have been taken from the website of
each course provider.
Table 2. Cost of Bar training for 2022/23 entry – inclusive of the BSB fee
Provider
Domicile
3-step pathway
4-step pathway
Integrated
academic and
vocational
pathway
Bar training
Bar
training
(part 1)
Bar
training
(part 2)
BPP London
Overseas
£16,151
UK
£15,151
BPP Non-
London
Overseas
£15,121
UK
£14,121
CAR
Overseas
£20,700
UK
£18,700
CLS
All
£16,340
ICCA
All
£13,990
£1,895
£12,095
MMU
All
£12,870
NTU
All
£12,200
ULaw London
All
£14,000
ULaw Non-
London
All
£12,700
UNN
All
£12,300
£3,075
£9,225
Undergraduate
tuition fees
UWE
All
£13,500
£3,000
£10,500
* The cost of combining the Bar training course with a formal Master’s degree varies by provider. For further
information, see the respective websites.
For the three-stage pathway, the cost of training for the Bar (including the BSB fee) for 2022/23
ranged from £12,200 to £18,700 for UK domiciled students, and from £12,200 to £20,700 for
overseas domiciled students across providers. The average cost of Bar training across providers
was around £15,000 for 2022/23 entry.
The inflation adjusted cost of the course dropped at most course providers following the
implementation of the new courses that followed on from the BPTC
4
(those starting from 2020/21
onwards).
4
The BPTC (Bar Professional Training Course) was the previous name of the vocational component of Bar
training and ran from 2011/12 until 2019/20
BAR STANDARDS BOARD
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BAR TRAINING 2022: STATISTICS BY COURSE PROVIDER
Enrolments by provider
The below chart shows the number of those who enrolled on Bar training courses by provider
between July 2021 and June 2022. There were 2,172 students who enrolled during this period
across all sites, up from 2,112 for July 2020 to June 2021. Information on the demographic profile of
those enrolling in 2020/21-2021/22 can be found in the appendices.
Chart 1. Enrolments in 2021/22 by course provider
5
The table below gives a breakdown of the proportion of a cohort studying the course full time and
part time at course providers offering part time study.
Table 3. Study mode of those enrolling between July 2021 and June 2022 by course provider
Provider
Full time
Part time
Overall - Count
1988
184
Overall – Per cent
92%
8%
BPP London
87%
13%
CLS
94%
6%
MMU
54%
46%
ULaw Birmingham
77%
23%
ULaw Leeds
75%
25%
ULaw London
86%
14%
UNN
93%
7%
All other sites had full time students only
5
This is the latest year for which we have a full record of enrolment across providers
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BAR TRAINING 2022: STATISTICS BY COURSE PROVIDER
Student results by provider
The tables in this section relate to student results by provider. As there are different course
offerings, and providers may have different awards for those undertaking study at their institution,
the information below only contains comparisons between providers on overall measures that are
valid across all of them.
Statistics in the below tables depend to some extent on receiving the most up to date data from
each provider, and students having a chance to re-sit any modules they did not pass at the first
attempt. As the data used for several tables in this section analyses latest sits only, the most up to
date data will include students that have re-sat modules they did not pass the first time around.
Ideally, we would have results data for the most recent attempts from every course provider, but at
the time of writing we do not have the most recent record for some. As a result we have used a cut-
off date of sits taken as of the end of December 2021.
With the exception of the ‘Overall’ column in Table 4, statistics are given where there are 15 or more
students in a relevant group. Students included in these tables are those that enrolled between July
2020 and October 2020 only.
6
6
Students can enrol at multiple times throughout the year on the Bar training courses, and the proportion of
students enrolling at different times throughout the year differs by provider. If a student enrolled later in the
2020/21 year, then they would have had fewer sits in which to complete the course as of Dec-2021, and so
pass rates would be expected to be lower for such students. This makes it more difficult to compare across
providers and so a defined enrolment window is used to give more of a like for like comparison for this report.
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BAR TRAINING 2022: STATISTICS BY COURSE PROVIDER
Pass rates by degree classification – full time students who enrolled
between July 2020 and October 2020
Table 4. Percentage of students that had passed all 10 modules as of latest attempt before 31
December 2021, by provider and degree classification
Provider
First class
Upper second
class
Lower second
class
Overall
7
Count
Pass
Rate
Count
Pass
Rate
Count
Pass
Rate
Count
Pass
Rate
All students
367
84%
713
65%
253
39%
1333
65%
BPP London
63
81%
123
59%
68
28%
254
56%
BPP Manchester
32
91%
59
56%
-
-
94
68%
BPP Other sites
26
81%
65
49%
39
28%
130
49%
CAR
-
-
38
76%
-
-
56
70%
CLS
94
89%
157
74%
26
65%
277
78%
ICCA
17
94%
18
94%
-
-
35
94%
MMU
-
-
-
-
-
-
13
62%
NTU
-
-
30
50%
-
-
53
53%
ULaw Birmingham
20
80%
33
64%
-
-
58
66%
ULaw London
41
76%
76
64%
-
-
131
66%
ULaw Other sites
29
93%
52
73%
-
-
87
79%
UNN
17
65%
23
57%
-
-
42
60%
UWE*
-
-
31
65%
64
41%
103
51%
• The average for all students with the above degree classifications was 65%
• Students who have not yet passed may still go on to do so.
• The number of students at MMU is too small to represent for individual degree classifications in the above
table. Overall, 6 out of 10 students at MMU with a first class or 2:1 degree who had sat all ten modules
had passed the course as of 31 December 2021, and 8 out of 13 students across all degree
classifications at MMU who had sat all modules had passed the course (this equates to a 62% pass rate
compared to 65% for all students).
The table below displays the percentage of students who passed all 10 modules at the first attempt.
7
The overall figure is given for this table in order to provide pass rate figures for all providers, even when
numbers are too low to provide comparisons by degree class. Note that comparisons by degree class
represent a better comparative measure across providers, as provider’s student cohorts vary considerably by
the proportion of students with different degree classifications.
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BAR TRAINING 2022: STATISTICS BY COURSE PROVIDER
Table 5. Percentage of students that passed all 10 modules at the first attempt by provider and
degree classification as of December 2021
Provider
First class
Upper second class
Lower second class
Count
%
Count
%
Count
%
All students
367
69%
713
36%
253
13%
BPP London
63
65%
123
30%
68
6%
BPP Manchester
32
75%
59
34%
-
-
BPP Other sites
26
73%
65
23%
39
10%
CAR
-
-
38
21%
-
-
CLS
94
78%
157
46%
26
31%
ICCA
17
94%
18
83%
-
-
NTU
-
-
30
23%
-
-
ULaw Birmingham
20
60%
33
55%
-
-
ULaw London
41
63%
76
30%
-
-
ULaw Other sites
29
72%
52
48%
-
-
UNN
17
35%
23
22%
-
-
UWE
-
-
31
32%
64
19%
• The average for all students with the above degree classifications was 41%.
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BAR TRAINING 2022: STATISTICS BY COURSE PROVIDER
Student Progression
This section provides information on progression onto pupillage following on from vocational Bar
training. Those seeking to undertake pupillage in England and Wales are allowed up to five years in
which they can gain pupillage following completion of the vocational component of Bar training–
after this point, a waiver would be needed.
In cases where charts relate to students domiciled in the UK or overseas only, this refers to the
region in which the student was domiciled prior to enrolment. Most of those domiciled in other
countries prior to undertaking a vocational Bar training course do not appear to seek pupillage in
England and Wales following completion of the course. For this reason, two of the charts in this
section relates to data on those ordinarily domiciled in the UK only.
The charts below do not control for one important factor, which has been found to correlate with
gaining pupillage - first-degree institution attended.
8
Chart 7. Status of vocational training students by domicile, year of enrolment and first degree
classification overall – as of November 2022
9
8
A further exploration of overall trends in student progression is to be given in a separate report due to be
published by the BSB, which will summarise overall trends for those undertaking Bar training courses.
9
“Not yet complete” means the student has either not taken all the assessments, not passed all the
assessments, deferred one or more assessments to a future year, or been permitted to suspend their studies
and resume at a specified point.
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BAR TRAINING 2022: STATISTICS BY COURSE PROVIDER
Chart 7 above shows the overall status (as of November 2022) of all students for whom we have
results. The inclusion of part time students for 2020/21, and 2019/20 will slightly boost the
proportion of those who have not completed the course for those years, as we have not received all
of the data for these students at a point where they could have completed the course.
The difference between overseas and UK domiciled students in the proportion gaining pupillage
following the course can clearly be seen. Otherwise, the proportions who failed and who had not yet
completed the course are broadly in line with each other by domicile. There does appear to be a
greater proportion of UK students who withdrew from the BPTC compared to overseas students
(particularly for those with a 2:2 degree), although it is still a relatively small proportion that do so.
The proportion of those who go on to gain pupillage has a strong relationship with first degree
classification. Chart 7 shows that a relatively low proportion of UK domiciled students with a 2:2
degree go on to gain pupillage, and a higher proportion take longer to finish vocational training than
those with a 2:1 or first-class degree (although most of those with a 2:2 degree class are likely to
pass vocational training eventually).
This trend is also reflected in Chart 8 below, which gives the proportion of UK domiciled students
who have passed the Bar training course who have gone on to gain pupillage by first degree
classification.
Chart 8. Progression of UK domiciled Bar training graduates onto pupillage by year of
enrolment and first degree classification overall – as of November 2022
Chart 9 below represents the proportion of UK domiciled students who enrolled on a Bar training
course between 2016/17 and 2020/21 who have commenced pupillage by course provider. The
most recent cohort of 2020/21 have been included, but it should be noted that as it can take some
time for graduates to obtain pupillage, pupillage rates are higher for earlier cohorts (as shown in
Chart 8). As a result, including the 2020/21 cohort means pupillage rates reported in this chart are
slightly lower than they would be if this cohort was not included.
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BAR TRAINING 2022: STATISTICS BY COURSE PROVIDER
Statistics are not provided where the number of graduates in a grouping was fewer than 15, which is
why many degree class groupings for provider sites are missing from the below.
Chart 9. Progression of UK Bar training graduates onto pupillage by degree class and course
provider – Those who enrolled between 2016/17 and 2020/21 – as of November 2022
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BAR TRAINING 2022: STATISTICS BY COURSE PROVIDER
Appendices
Enrolments
Table A1. Student profile by course provider for those enrolling on Bar training courses for 2020/21 and 2021/22 enrolment years together
Demographic Group
BPP
Birm
ingh
am
BPP
Brist
ol
BPP
Leed
s
BPP
Lond
on
BPP
Man
ches
ter
CAR
CLS
ICC
A
MM
U
NTU
ULa
w
Birm
ingh
am
ULa
w
Brist
ol
ULa
w
Leed
s
ULa
w
Liver
pool
ULa
w
Lond
on
ULa
w
Man
ches
ter
ULa
w
Nott
ingh
am
UN
N
UW
E
Tota
l
Age
Under 25
75%
59%
82%
71%
87%
85%
74%
57%
72%
63%
68%
82%
70%
78%
70%
80%
83%
83%
70%
73%
25-34
16%
34%
14%
21%
12%
11%
20%
35%
13%
27%
21%
16%
21%
22%
20%
17%
17%
11%
24%
20%
35+
8%
7%
5%
8%
2%
4%
7%
8%
15%
10%
11%
3%
9%
0%
10%
3%
0%
6%
6%
7%
Disabilit
y
Declared
disability
1%
3%
7%
5%
4%
10%
8%
20%
15%
2%
19%
18%
22%
33%
18%
15%
17%
4%
4%
10%
No declared
disability
49%
46%
33%
55%
39%
85%
92%
79%
81%
19%
81%
82%
76%
67%
82%
85%
83%
46%
96%
70%
Pref. not to
say/No info.
49%
51%
60%
40%
57%
6%
0%
2%
4%
79%
0%
0%
2%
0%
0%
0%
0%
50%
0%
20%
Domicil
e
Overseas
47%
20%
22%
35%
34%
65%
48%
4%
11%
40%
12%
13%
23%
28%
22%
25%
22%
20%
87%
36%
UK
21%
31%
38%
34%
29%
35%
52%
96%
89%
60%
57%
61%
56%
72%
56%
56%
52%
29%
13%
45%
Pref. not to
say/No info.
33%
49%
41%
31%
37%
0%
0%
0%
0%
0%
31%
26%
21%
0%
22%
19%
26%
51%
0%
19%
Ethnicity
Asian/Asian
British
54%
29%
28%
41%
35%
62%
55%
9%
21%
15%
32%
24%
33%
28%
31%
40%
26%
25%
79%
41%
Black/Black
British
10%
8%
1%
10%
7%
5%
7%
4%
17%
5%
13%
3%
7%
17%
16%
7%
13%
1%
2%
8%
BAR STANDARDS BOARD
15
BAR TRAINING 2022: STATISTICS BY COURSE PROVIDER
Demographic Group
BPP
Birm
ingh
am
BPP
Brist
ol
BPP
Leed
s
BPP
Lond
on
BPP
Man
ches
ter
CAR
CLS
ICC
A
MM
U
NTU
ULa
w
Birm
ingh
am
ULa
w
Brist
ol
ULa
w
Leed
s
ULa
w
Liver
pool
ULa
w
Lond
on
ULa
w
Man
ches
ter
ULa
w
Nott
ingh
am
UN
N
UW
E
Tota
l
Mixed/Multiple
Ethnic Groups
3%
8%
7%
5%
5%
2%
5%
8%
0%
2%
6%
11%
2%
6%
8%
5%
0%
3%
3%
5%
Other
1%
2%
2%
2%
1%
1%
2%
1%
0%
0%
4%
0%
3%
0%
5%
1%
0%
1%
7%
3%
White
13%
27%
41%
26%
31%
27%
28%
74%
55%
16%
40%
63%
55%
50%
38%
42%
61%
37%
9%
32%
Pref. not to
say/No info.
18%
25%
20%
16%
21%
2%
3%
5%
8%
62%
4%
0%
2%
0%
2%
5%
0%
32%
0%
10%
Gender
Female
54%
53%
67%
52%
60%
58%
33%
56%
64%
57%
64%
74%
63%
72%
63%
62%
83%
35%
39%
52%
Male
46%
47%
32%
48%
40%
39%
28%
43%
36%
43%
34%
26%
37%
28%
36%
38%
17%
34%
60%
40%
I use a different
term
0%
0%
0%
0%
0%
1%
0%
0%
0%
0%
0%
0%
0%
0%
0%
0%
0%
0%
0%
0%
Pref. not to
say/No info.
0%
0%
1%
1%
0%
1%
40%
1%
0%
0%
1%
0%
0%
0%
1%
0%
0%
31%
1%
9%
Degree
class
First Class
10%
17%
30%
17%
27%
18%
32%
47%
26%
17%
26%
32%
29%
22%
26%
26%
30%
19%
12%
24%
Upper Second
Class
39%
42%
61%
45%
64%
64%
51%
45%
42%
58%
54%
61%
58%
72%
57%
61%
65%
34%
28%
50%
Lower Second
Class
49%
36%
8%
35%
4%
17%
11%
2%
32%
22%
9%
8%
10%
6%
9%
7%
4%
3%
51%
19%
Pref. not to
say/No info.
2%
5%
1%
4%
4%
1%
6%
5%
0%
3%
10%
0%
3%
0%
7%
6%
0%
44%
8%
6%
Bar Standards Board
16
BAR TRAINING 2022: STATISTICS BY COURSE PROVIDER
Contacting us
We are committed to providing a high standard of service and dealing with everyone in a way that is
fair, transparent, and proportionate. We welcome your feedback on our services, particularly where the
level of service has exceeded or fallen below your expectations. Your comments and suggestions are
important to us as they will help us to meet our obligations to you and to improve our performance.
Write to us
Bar Standards Board
289-293 High Holborn
London WC1V 7HZ
Tel: 020 7611 1444
contactus@barstandardsboard.org.uk
www.barstandardsboard.org.uk
Twitter: @barstandards
Linked In: www.linkedin.com/company/the-bar-standards-board
In addition, if you would like this report in an alternative format, please contact the BSB
Research Team via Research@BarStandardsBoard.org.uk
