Page 76 - Judicial Diversity Update report

For failure to progress beyond the paper sift:

• Showing candidates not only what examples they gave which were
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considered not to satisfy the competencies, but to say why in sufficient
detail for candidates to understand whether and how to select better
examples, and
• Giving anonymised examples of evidence from successful applicants in
that competition, that were considered to meet the competencies. This
would be especially beneficial for candidates with non-traditional
practice experience.

4.4. We further propose that the JAC should consider introducing a passporting
scheme. This would allow candidates who had 'passed' an early stage in the
selection process for a competition to bypass that same stage if they entered the
same competition within a reasonable period afterwards and would go some
way to encouraging unsuccessful applicants to try again. We are aware of
instances where sometimes a candidate will not progress in the same way in the
next competition even if their submission for that stage is identical to what it
was last time.

4.5. We recognise the difficulty where the stage through which a candidate has
progressed in an earlier competition is a qualifying test: on the one hand the
content of the qualifying test for the next competition is bound to be different,
however the fact that the candidate progressed beyond the first qualifying test
shows that he or she has satisfied the competencies once. As such, it would be
reasonable to treat that as evidence satisfying the competencies a second time;
and by-passing the qualifying test would be a reasonable dispensation. In terms
of how this dispensation might operate, we would suggest the following
controls:

i. Applying it only to the very next competition after the one previously
'passed'; and

160 We note that the JAC recently updated the competency framework. The current framework consists
of five competencies, and a sixth only for some posts, namely ‘Leadership’. The previous
‘Communicating Effectively’ competency was amalgamated with ‘Working and Interacting with
Others’ into a new ‘Working and Communicating with Others’ competency. See ‘Completing your
self-assessment’, Judicial Appointments Commission, available online at
https://www.judicialappointments.gov.uk/completing-your-self-assessment.
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