Law Weblog

English language tests for aspiring barristers

Friday 12 February 2010 at 7:18 am | In News | 1 Comment Students hoping to become barristers will have to prove they are fluent in English before they are accepted into Bar school.

The pilot exams – aimed at preventing applicants with mediocre linguistic abilities from winning a place – will be introduced this month.

They have been launched following complaints that many students on the respected £15,000 course are unable to express themselves coherently, a major handicap in a profession so reliant on public speaking.

Dr Valerie Shrimplin, from the Bar Standards Board, said it wanted to encourage a diverse range of students but they needed to be proficient in English.

She said much of the course revolved around role-play to re-create a court room scene which meant those who struggled with the language hampered others.

“Language has been a problem,” she said. “Language is a key skill, it is not as if students are on a computer course – for this course it is crucial.

“We like to think that everybody should look at the Bar of England and Wales as the gold standard.”

The pilot exams follow a 2008 survey in which many trainee barristers claimed that a number of their fellow students would never succeed in the courtroom because of their poor language skills.

All candidates, enrolling on the BVC since 2009, for whom English or Welsh is not their first language must demonstrate that they have attained a minimum 7.5 IELTS standard in all sections of the test.

Reported in FT here