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FRU failure...
This is embarrassing but,
I have contrived to fail the Social Security FRU exam in Oct last year and now the test sent out in June. I am genuinely shocked I failed the latter - I have an LLB, MA and a PhD and was confident I'd passed it.
It was only statutory analysis (albeit an unhelpfully drafted bundle of legislation).
As there is no opportunity for feedback, its hard to assess how to improve for the next one.
But I was always taught accept the mark you got, no excuses or whining and move on. So, I would like to know:
1. As there is no feedback or mark awarded, does anyone know if the FRU test is marked as a quota - ie they take the top 50 marks; or there is a set pass mark?
2. Much as I don't really want know, I have to ask - is failing it twice rare? My unfortunate gut feeling, is it probably is. Deep shame.
I really want to do FRU, so its frustrating. But any reflections welcome - perhaps "Dear Helen, despite your qualifications you are thick/unworthy/naive etc etc"
fanks all
I have contrived to fail the Social Security FRU exam in Oct last year and now the test sent out in June. I am genuinely shocked I failed the latter - I have an LLB, MA and a PhD and was confident I'd passed it.
It was only statutory analysis (albeit an unhelpfully drafted bundle of legislation).
As there is no opportunity for feedback, its hard to assess how to improve for the next one.
But I was always taught accept the mark you got, no excuses or whining and move on. So, I would like to know:
1. As there is no feedback or mark awarded, does anyone know if the FRU test is marked as a quota - ie they take the top 50 marks; or there is a set pass mark?
2. Much as I don't really want know, I have to ask - is failing it twice rare? My unfortunate gut feeling, is it probably is. Deep shame.
I really want to do FRU, so its frustrating. But any reflections welcome - perhaps "Dear Helen, despite your qualifications you are thick/unworthy/naive etc etc"
fanks all
Scroll to see replies
Reply 1
5
Loads of people fail the FRU exam. I have been in the office and heard them talking about the fact people are shocked they fail cos they are already lawyers etc etc - so I wouldn't take it too badly.
You know you are not thick, but one answer could be that you are clearly an academic and the practical world is really different. Perhaps you gave academically reasoned answers? This is why people on the BVC who have firsts can sometimes fail modles and those with bear 2.2s can sail through VCs its all about ways of thinking.
I spoke to the lady after social secrity and she said they really only wanted a couple of lines ie
"by section 4 of the enabiling act they were alowed to review the descision under reg 4 and 5 which says blah and as Mr D did blog that qualifies."
I think basically you pass if you seem to have grasped the concepts rather than there being 50% pass mark as such etc. I doublt there are quotas as there are LOADS of people seem to come to inductions when i have been in the office.
if its any help,although I didn't I thought I had failed both exams as its not at all clear what they want, so your not alone.
You know you are not thick, but one answer could be that you are clearly an academic and the practical world is really different. Perhaps you gave academically reasoned answers? This is why people on the BVC who have firsts can sometimes fail modles and those with bear 2.2s can sail through VCs its all about ways of thinking.
I spoke to the lady after social secrity and she said they really only wanted a couple of lines ie
"by section 4 of the enabiling act they were alowed to review the descision under reg 4 and 5 which says blah and as Mr D did blog that qualifies."
I think basically you pass if you seem to have grasped the concepts rather than there being 50% pass mark as such etc. I doublt there are quotas as there are LOADS of people seem to come to inductions when i have been in the office.
if its any help,although I didn't I thought I had failed both exams as its not at all clear what they want, so your not alone.
Reply 2
Helen977
OP
Thanks FMQ, that's v. helpful. You are probably right about the answers I gave - they were more exam type than advice based. I'll have another go I think - I shall call it determination, although it may just be pride...
Reply 3
Join the club! I failed the Employment exam - I was genuinely shocked, as I was confident that I had got everything 100% right. I almost wonder whether I was failed for answering in bullet points, despite the law being correct. Its very hard to know why - there is no feedback and there is nothing on how you should answer, even though the exercise is abstract. Will just have to retake, I wouldn't worry about it.
There is no quota in Employment; I imagine it is the same for SS
There is no quota in Employment; I imagine it is the same for SS
Reply 4
5
As i say lots of people fail it, it won't have been bullet point answers, you should accept that you will have missed something, that is very easy to do with statutory interpretaton, and this has given the impression you didn't grasp the concept, or you may struggle in the next attempt. Lots of sucessfull, well educated, senior people have failed that exam, so try not to worry. I have heard them talking about it in the office.
It does seem sh*t that there is no precedent worked example and no feed back, but unlike a uni where you pay to be educated they are a charity with hundereds and hundreds of people volunteering and only 2 permie legal officers.
A girl in my class failed, and she passed the next time and has gone on to win about 5 cases, so you will both be fine.
It does seem sh*t that there is no precedent worked example and no feed back, but unlike a uni where you pay to be educated they are a charity with hundereds and hundreds of people volunteering and only 2 permie legal officers.
A girl in my class failed, and she passed the next time and has gone on to win about 5 cases, so you will both be fine.
Reply 5
I don't think the 300+ candidates from each training session, no matter how good they are, could all pass, so it is perfectly natural that some 'fail', whether they actually failed or not in reality is infinitely debatable in my view, and given the sheer numbers, the great fall back position of 'we can't give individual feedback' is the best protection they could employ. I sincerely doubt that a worked answer would ever be provided, as that would mean those who felt they did not fail (by comparison) would make a challenge...
But I am cynical...it comes with age.
But I am cynical...it comes with age.
Reply 6
5
SevenStars
I don't think the 300+ candidates from each training session, no matter how good they are, could all pass, so it is perfectly natural that some 'fail',whether they actually failed or not in reality is infinitely debatable in my view, and given the sheer numbers, the great fall back position of 'we can't give individual feedback' is the best protection they could employ. I sincerely doubt that a worked answer would ever be provided, as that would mean those who felt they did not fail (by comparison) would make a challenge...
But I am cynical...it comes with age.
But I am cynical...it comes with age.
whether they actually failed or not in reality is infinitely debatable in my view
Are you a FRU rep? If not are you an aspirant who failed? This is your made up opinion for whatever reason, and it is somewhat inappropriate on a forum like this don't you think?
the great fall back position of 'we can't give individual feedback' is the best protection they could employ.
I have personally been in the office and seen them marking HUNDREDS of test papers. They are a charity who gives us experince we can't really get elsewhere, and their time is taken up with that not wasting time feeding back to people who think because they have a few A levels and a degree are invincible in the exam stakes - if 300 people sit the test and 100 fail do you honestly expect them to spend the 20 mins or so preparing feedback (and answering the protestations thereafter) for each of those 100 people!!!!!
They reglate numbers through staged inductions and people naturally moving on after BVC year. Not by wasting peoples time!
Reply 7
Hmm, FMQ, I strongly advise you to re-read what I actually wrote, as opposed to responding to a point I did not make, nor even suggest (ie individual feedback).
For your clarification on a minor point - a view, or an opinion remain just that, views or opinions. I made clear, and you highlighted my words, that the opinion I gave was IN MY VIEW.
So, multiple exclamation points on your part or not (particularly since your exclamations are part and parcel of something you decided I'd written, as opposed to anything I actually wrote), my view remains the same.
For your clarification on a minor point - a view, or an opinion remain just that, views or opinions. I made clear, and you highlighted my words, that the opinion I gave was IN MY VIEW.
So, multiple exclamation points on your part or not (particularly since your exclamations are part and parcel of something you decided I'd written, as opposed to anything I actually wrote), my view remains the same.
Reply 8
5
SevenStars
Hmm, FMQ, I strongly advise you to re-read what I actually wrote, as opposed to responding to a point I did not make, nor even suggest (ie individual feedback).
For your clarification on a minor point - a view, or an opinion remain just that, views or opinions. I made clear, and you highlighted my words, that the opinion I gave was IN MY VIEW.
So, multiple exclamation points on your part or not (particularly since your exclamations are part and parcel of something you decided I'd written, as opposed to anything I actually wrote), my view remains the same.
For your clarification on a minor point - a view, or an opinion remain just that, views or opinions. I made clear, and you highlighted my words, that the opinion I gave was IN MY VIEW.
So, multiple exclamation points on your part or not (particularly since your exclamations are part and parcel of something you decided I'd written, as opposed to anything I actually wrote), my view remains the same.
Iread your post clearly, but perhaps you didnt read either of mine, the first of which states exactly what you need to do to pass? I have redited it for clarity.
Your post reads that you think they fail some people because they have too many aspirants, and that this is also why they don't provide feedback, because, as the people havent actually failed they can't. I am telling you categorically that that is not true. If that is not what you meant you need to edit your post.
Reply 9
I see you edited your post whilst I was responding to you.
No matter. My view remains my view. I'm happy for you to disagree with it.
No matter. My view remains my view. I'm happy for you to disagree with it.
Reply 10
I can also categorically tell you that my post doesn't imply your reinterpretation of it.
Reply 11
FRU trainees are all sharp post graduate law students. If the FRU told us what they wanted in our answers, of course they'd have a 90%+ pass rate.
... but then they couldn't get away with training nearly as many people... which would mean losing thousands of the £50,000 they take in every year in training.
Its annoying and many complain unfair. Do they want a concise answer or a long explanatory answer? Do they want us to show off our eloquence and fancy vocab or are they only interested in answers written in the simplest English? Do they just take the first 200 'really good answers' (which would be most answers)? They could do.
Unfortunately, it is an undeniable fact that, despite perfectly valid reasons, their "absolutely no feedback, don't even ask" policy does shield them from any sort of scrutiny. It means they could (I said COULD) take their £32.50 training fee off a couple of thousand people a year and mark only 200 answers. I'm not saying they do, but it is again, undeniable, that it would be easier, faster, cheaper and raise more money to do that, while at the same keeping the volunteer numbers under control.
Yes I have a bee in my bonnet. I have distinctions in countless maths and post-graduate law assessments, including stat analysis / interpretation tests that were much more difficult (and timed) than FRU's 'do it all day Sunday if you want' test. I went through my answer with a fine toothed comb, made it as clear, logical and informative as possible, got two other law graduates to check it before submitting it and....
Result: Fail
yea I smell a rat. Especially with reports of qualified lawyers 'failing', lecturers 'failing' and Helen, you even have a doctorate?? Pfff sominks not rite.
... but then they couldn't get away with training nearly as many people... which would mean losing thousands of the £50,000 they take in every year in training.
Its annoying and many complain unfair. Do they want a concise answer or a long explanatory answer? Do they want us to show off our eloquence and fancy vocab or are they only interested in answers written in the simplest English? Do they just take the first 200 'really good answers' (which would be most answers)? They could do.
Unfortunately, it is an undeniable fact that, despite perfectly valid reasons, their "absolutely no feedback, don't even ask" policy does shield them from any sort of scrutiny. It means they could (I said COULD) take their £32.50 training fee off a couple of thousand people a year and mark only 200 answers. I'm not saying they do, but it is again, undeniable, that it would be easier, faster, cheaper and raise more money to do that, while at the same keeping the volunteer numbers under control.
Yes I have a bee in my bonnet. I have distinctions in countless maths and post-graduate law assessments, including stat analysis / interpretation tests that were much more difficult (and timed) than FRU's 'do it all day Sunday if you want' test. I went through my answer with a fine toothed comb, made it as clear, logical and informative as possible, got two other law graduates to check it before submitting it and....
Result: Fail
yea I smell a rat. Especially with reports of qualified lawyers 'failing', lecturers 'failing' and Helen, you even have a doctorate?? Pfff sominks not rite.
Reply 12
What are you all talking about?
Reply 13
Original post by Ropnoy
FRU trainees are all sharp post graduate law students. If the FRU told us what they wanted in our answers, of course they'd have a 90%+ pass rate.
... but then they couldn't get away with training nearly as many people... which would mean losing thousands of the £50,000 they take in every year in training.
... but then they couldn't get away with training nearly as many people... which would mean losing thousands of the £50,000 they take in every year in training.
Not sure this is right, because the employment training day is always quite heavily over-subscribed and you have to book for it a long way in advance.
I do agree that something is wrong though, it may just be a case of bad marking or FRU not telling people what they want I guess.
Reply 14
helen, i really feel your pain!
I have no idea if FRU have quotas or not. What I do know is that I failed social security once and employment after that, but discovered I passed my employment resit on monday. to my immense relief.
i made quite a clear factual cock-up on my social security exam and I thus deserved to fail it - but the employment failure was particularly embarrassing. like you, i thought: 'who the hell fails FRU twice??' it also confused the hell out of me as i had no idea why i'd failed.
a kind friend of mine, who passed the same employment exam, showed me his answer and his style (NOT the content, obviously!) helped me enormously when i did my resit. the key, it seemed, was to write everything as if you're explaining it to a Martian who has only just landed on Planet Earth. start from the absolute first principles and back everything up with a reference to statute, even if it seems bleeding obvious. perhaps that's where a particularly academic bent might not serve you all that well.
anyway, do try again, and see if this law-for-Martians approach works as well for you as it did for me. third time's the charm!
I have no idea if FRU have quotas or not. What I do know is that I failed social security once and employment after that, but discovered I passed my employment resit on monday. to my immense relief.
i made quite a clear factual cock-up on my social security exam and I thus deserved to fail it - but the employment failure was particularly embarrassing. like you, i thought: 'who the hell fails FRU twice??' it also confused the hell out of me as i had no idea why i'd failed.
a kind friend of mine, who passed the same employment exam, showed me his answer and his style (NOT the content, obviously!) helped me enormously when i did my resit. the key, it seemed, was to write everything as if you're explaining it to a Martian who has only just landed on Planet Earth. start from the absolute first principles and back everything up with a reference to statute, even if it seems bleeding obvious. perhaps that's where a particularly academic bent might not serve you all that well.
anyway, do try again, and see if this law-for-Martians approach works as well for you as it did for me. third time's the charm!
Reply 15
Original post by kiltedsheep
the key, it seemed, was to write everything as if you're explaining it to a Martian who has only just landed on Planet Earth
Hahaha. And I was expecting "lay person". Yea that's gotta be right. I suppose they don't even want phrases like "by virtue of..." when you could say "this is explained in...".
Damn fancy lawyer jiberish
Reply 16
11
I can understand why people are frustrated. Having passed the Social Security test, I would say this:
* The questions are actually quite hard; they require a thorough reading of the legislation in the pack and an understanding of how it all fits together
* I think there is a right answer to most if not all of the questions. Therefore, however academic you are with your argument, if you simply miss something then that might well cause you to fail.
* This doesn't mean that if you fail you aren't good, academically or in practice. For my part at uni I do very little statutory interpretation; mostly it is legal principles from the case law. So I found the test hard and I spend most of the weekend they gave us perfecting my answers.
* As for the length of answers, I imagine if you are confident that you can get it right a short answer would be appreciated. For myself I prefered to explain my reasoning properly so my answer was quite long in total. I agree that some more information could be provided as to how they want the questions tackled and the answers presented. It would make things fairer (as universities themselves will have different styles, and one uni's style might appeal more to the FRU marker than another) and would also make things easier for them, as the answers would be quicker to mark.
* As for feedback, I don't agree with those who think it should be introduced. Anyone who has been inside the FRU office will see how limited the staffing is. Unless they hired someone specifically to mark papers and give feedback, there is no way it could be done. I think we can assume they are being consistent, given that they don't even know our names when our answers are marked.
* I have no information on quotas or how they decide the number of people they want. A lot of people do seem to pass though.
* The questions are actually quite hard; they require a thorough reading of the legislation in the pack and an understanding of how it all fits together
* I think there is a right answer to most if not all of the questions. Therefore, however academic you are with your argument, if you simply miss something then that might well cause you to fail.
* This doesn't mean that if you fail you aren't good, academically or in practice. For my part at uni I do very little statutory interpretation; mostly it is legal principles from the case law. So I found the test hard and I spend most of the weekend they gave us perfecting my answers.
* As for the length of answers, I imagine if you are confident that you can get it right a short answer would be appreciated. For myself I prefered to explain my reasoning properly so my answer was quite long in total. I agree that some more information could be provided as to how they want the questions tackled and the answers presented. It would make things fairer (as universities themselves will have different styles, and one uni's style might appeal more to the FRU marker than another) and would also make things easier for them, as the answers would be quicker to mark.
* As for feedback, I don't agree with those who think it should be introduced. Anyone who has been inside the FRU office will see how limited the staffing is. Unless they hired someone specifically to mark papers and give feedback, there is no way it could be done. I think we can assume they are being consistent, given that they don't even know our names when our answers are marked.
* I have no information on quotas or how they decide the number of people they want. A lot of people do seem to pass though.
Reply 17
Their annual report says they can only take on 60 - 70% of their referrals, plus it would seem that volunteers can take on as many cases as they like.
"As always, the sadness is that we could not represent all the clients whose cases were referred to us" FRU Report 2010
So if that is correct, either all this quota talk is nonsense (and it also throws into doubt that they'd be overly picky with the phrasing of answers)
Or the fact that they can only take on 60-70% of their referrals is actually not to do with insufficient volunteers, but to do with the specifics of the cases.
...in which case conspiracy theories can come out to play again
"As always, the sadness is that we could not represent all the clients whose cases were referred to us" FRU Report 2010
So if that is correct, either all this quota talk is nonsense (and it also throws into doubt that they'd be overly picky with the phrasing of answers)
Or the fact that they can only take on 60-70% of their referrals is actually not to do with insufficient volunteers, but to do with the specifics of the cases.
...in which case conspiracy theories can come out to play again
Reply 18
Original post by Ropnoy
Hahaha. And I was expecting "lay person". Yea that's gotta be right. I suppose they don't even want phrases like "by virtue of..." when you could say "this is explained in...".
Damn fancy lawyer jiberish
Damn fancy lawyer jiberish
no no no!
you misunderstand me.by 'Martian', i didn't mean to sound like i was taking the piss out of laymen. the FRU test doesn't say you're trying to explain things to laymen - it just says to answer the question!
in my retake answer, i backed up almost every sentence i i wrote with reference to the statute. what i ended up with was a much longer answer that gave (what felt like) a ridiculous amount of detail about each logical step i was taking - but it worked. so 'Martian' perhaps wasn't a helpful analogy, but that's the sort of thing I meant!
but thank you - it's good to be reminded once in a while that one can, unintentionally, sound like a pompous knob when talking about law...
Reply 19
I also wondered what sort of answers they were expecting, and decided to write a sentence or two giving the straight answer very clearly, followed by a separate paragraph headed 'workings' showing my train of thought in arriving at the answer, with detailed references to the statute.
I thought that this might gain me points if they were looking to mark the answers right or wrong quickly, while also showing that I hadn't just copied someone else's answers.
I did pass (employment) but I have no idea if that was the reason!
I should also say that having completed 8 cases never once did I have to interpret a statute to anywhere near that level. Aside from the one case that went to tribunal, the main part of the work was negotiating with the other side's solicitors.
I thought that this might gain me points if they were looking to mark the answers right or wrong quickly, while also showing that I hadn't just copied someone else's answers.
I did pass (employment) but I have no idea if that was the reason!
I should also say that having completed 8 cases never once did I have to interpret a statute to anywhere near that level. Aside from the one case that went to tribunal, the main part of the work was negotiating with the other side's solicitors.
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