Neil is banned from even thinking the acronym 'JIEB' these days. Moreover, he is not allowed within an exclusion zone of three miles around the meeting place where the Joint Board meet the tutors and they mull over the exam from the November before. He is kept in a small dimly lit room with a supply of black cherry yoghurt and constantly reassured that, 'it will be all right'.
In his place, Andy Deere from the NTI lecturing team (by some distance the nicest of us all) represented us and, following overnight scanning of teams of lawyers choppered in from distant locations, we have come up with this report of what was said. It is important to point out that we express none of NTI's opinions in this piece and all stats and words are those Andy furiously wrote down during the meeting:
Statistics
There were 151 candidates for the November 2021 sitting in England & Wales, which was up by 30 from the previous year.
For the Personal Insolvency paper, the pass mark was 53 (the fourth year in a row it has been around that figure) - 36 candidates passed (46%) and 43 failed.
For the Corporate Insolvency paper, the pass mark was 52 (it was 44 in 2020) - 48 candidates passed (41%) and 69 failed.
The average mark for the PI paper was 51%, and Corporate was 48%. Statistically, it is clear that the 'average student' does not pass the JIEB.
Feedback
The Examiner’s Report will be published imminently. As soon as we get it we will get our version out to all of our students, and if you are not one of ours you can email ad@nti.co.uk and request it.
The Board reported that there is an increasing number of candidates who attempt both papers and “walk away empty handed”, but also said that statistically, your chances are better if you sit both papers rather than one paper.
They further reported that the number of candidates sitting the Personal paper who demonstrated they have practical experience of Personal Insolvency is decreasing; but they recognise that that is probably the way the industry is going. Many candidates may only work for volume IVA providers, and others will work for Corporate firms that work on the occasional Bankruptcy but never do an IVA in practice.
For the Personal paper, they expected people to deal with the fact that the Bankrupt owned tenanted properties, not to treat them as matrimonial homes. For example - and it's a good one - don’t mention RoT for a self-employed painter and decorator!
For Corporate Insolvency, they Board said that many candidates have experience of all types of Corporate procedures, although they appreciate there are MVL specialists out there, for example. There is a tendency to ‘brain dump’. Students might score well, but they do so by writing copious amounts of knowledge rather than focusing on the question set.
We hope that is helpful, and have sent someone to the dimly lit room to release Neil, who you will be able to locate somewhere in the stratosphere when he reads the above.
