The published numbers
The SRA publishes a statistical report after every sitting. The most recent published at the time of writing is January 2026:
| Measure | January 2026 |
|---|---|
| All candidates | 53% passed |
| First-time candidates | 58% passed |
| FLK1 | 62% passed |
| FLK2 | 57% passed |
That was a recovery from July 2025, when the headline rate fell to 41% — the lowest recorded. The swing of twelve points in six months is the most useful thing in the whole dataset, because the exam did not become a third easier in between.
Why the headline rate understates first attempts
The headline figure counts everybody who sat, including candidates on a second or third attempt. Resitting candidates pass at lower rates than first-time candidates, for reasons that have little to do with the paper: they are, by definition, the group who did not clear the standard last time, and many resit without changing their preparation.
So the number that describes a well-prepared first-time candidate is the first-time rate — 58% in January 2026 — and even that is an average across candidates who prepared for three months and candidates who prepared for three weeks.
What moves the rate between sittings
- Who is in the room. The proportion of resitters is the single biggest driver, which is why a sitting following a bad sitting tends to look worse.
- Not the difficulty of the paper. Scaling exists precisely to strip that out: a harder paper needs fewer raw marks to reach 300. What is constant is the standard, not the questions.
- Preparation, in aggregate. Cohorts differ in how much time they had. Candidates preparing alongside full-time work are a large and growing share.
What it means for you
Honestly? Very little, directly. You are not competing against the cohort — the standard is fixed, and everyone who reaches it passes. A 53% pass rate does not mean you have a 53% chance; it means about half of a mixed group of candidates, prepared to wildly varying degrees, reached the standard.
The numbers are useful for exactly two things. They tell you the exam is a real filter, not a formality — worth planning for properly, as a revision plan sets out. And they tell you that being a resitter is a statistically worse position to be in, which is an argument for booking the sitting you are ready for rather than the next one available.
The number that actually predicts your result is your own: your score on unseen, timed questions in the weeks before, and whether it is even across subjects. What to aim for is a more useful target than any national average.