SQE1 Changes From January 2027: What the SRA Announced

The SRA published an announcement on 10 September 2026 confirming the first changes to SQE1 since the exam launched. The changes take effect from the January 2027 sitting.

This is the first in what the SRA describes as "a series of improvements" to the SQE, developed through feedback from candidates, Kaplan, employers, training providers, and the wider profession.

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What Is Changing

1. Fewer questions: 360 reduced to 340

SQE1 currently consists of two papers — FLK1 and FLK2 — each containing 180 questions, totalling 360 across the assessment.

From January 2027, the total question count drops to 340. The exact split per paper has not been confirmed in the initial announcement, but the most likely outcome is 170 questions per paper.

The duration of both papers stays the same. That means if the split is 170 per paper, candidates will have approximately 63–64 seconds per question rather than the current 60 seconds. The gain is modest but the psychological relief of slightly less time pressure across a long sitting is not nothing.

2. Questions grouped within specific FLK sessions

This is the more significant structural change.

Currently, all 180 questions in each paper are drawn from across the full range of Functioning Legal Knowledge subjects and presented in fully randomised order. A candidate could move from a Business Law question to a Wills question to a Land Law question with no pattern.

From January 2027, questions will be grouped within specific Functioning Legal Knowledge sessions. Within each session, questions will remain randomised between the subject areas covered by that session — but the sessions themselves will be organised by FLK area.

The SRA has not published the full session groupings in this initial announcement. Full details are available at the SQE website.

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What Is Not Changing

• The pass standard and marking methodology remain the same
• The total duration of each paper remains the same
• The content tested across Functioning Legal Knowledge subjects remains the same
• The single-best-answer format remains the same
• Within each session, questions continue to be fully randomised

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What This Means for January 2027 Candidates

The question-count reduction is good news

Twenty fewer questions is not a dramatic change, but it is a net positive for candidates. The same preparation required, marginally more time per question. If you are sitting in January 2027, this works in your favour.

The session grouping changes how to think about the exam day

Under the old structure, you needed to hold every subject in your head simultaneously across the full sitting. Under the new structure, there is more topical coherence within each session. This likely helps candidates who find topic-switching cognitively disruptive and may make it slightly easier to find your rhythm within a session.

It also has minor implications for how you run your warm-up and subject review in the final days before the exam. Rather than reviewing everything in one undifferentiated pass, it may be worth aligning your final-week review to roughly match how the exam will be grouped.

No change to preparation fundamentals

Nothing about this announcement changes the core preparation principles for SQE1:

• Volume of practice MCQs remains the single strongest predictor of pass rates
• Topic-level weakness diagnosis is still the right starting point for any structured plan
• Time management under exam conditions still needs to be practised explicitly
• The pass mark is still set after each sitting and still sits historically around 56–57%

If you are preparing for January 2027, build your revision timetable now. The changes to question count and session structure are administrative improvements — they do not change what you need to know or how hard you need to work.

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Why the SRA Is Making These Changes

The announcement explicitly links the changes to candidate feedback and the SRA's 2026 priorities around improving collaboration. The SRA describes this as evidence-led: "informed by assessment data, candidate feedback and continued evaluation of how the assessment operates in practice."

The framing of "first in a series of improvements" signals that further changes are coming, though no timeline or scope for subsequent changes has been published. We will update this page when further announcements are made.

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Key Dates for January 2027

Registration for January 2027 is open now. See SQE exam dates for all deadlines.

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Related:

• SQE1 July 2026 results: what to do next
• SQE resit guide 2026: strategy, costs and how to pass
• Full SQE1 pass rate history
• SQE exam dates and registration windows