[2023] UKUT 157 (AAC)

It is not at all obvious why the FTT decision rejected Mr Coombs’ challenge to ‘tutors’ advantage’ as that advantage is explained in some detail in Mr Hilton’s evidence; namely, how could tutors instruct candidates to adopt a strategy when they reached question number X, when the test was designed to obscure the numbering of the questions?; and, in any case, how did that strategy differ, materially, from a simple strategy of guessing the remainder of the questions when time grew short (which would not require knowledge of the number of questions in the test)?

I note that, in Ms Walton’s evidence, the explanation of how ‘tutors’ advantage’ would arise is less detailed and in somewhat different terms (it was said to arise by tutors getting children to practice answering a fixed number of questions in a given time frame). However, it is far from obvious that the FTT considered that Ms Walton’s version of ‘tutors’ advantage’ withstood Mr Coombs’ challenge in a way that Mr Hilton’s version did not: it is clear that the FTT regarded the evidence of Mr Hilton and Ms Walton as consistent. In any case, Mr Coombs’ more general challenge to the proposition that tutors knowing the number of questions in a test would give rise to any material advantage for their pupils, applies equally to Ms Walton’s version of ‘tutors’ advantage’ (in part because, following disclosure, all candidates, not just tutored ones, would know the number of questions in the test, and could “practice” in the way posited by Ms Walton).