News & Events
Judicial Appointments Commission Update
20 February 2010
“2010 has proved to be a busy year for us so far with a lot of work coming to fruition including publication of our first set of Official Statistics and the launch of a video of a selection day role play exercise. Copies of the role play are also available on DVD.
Selection Exercise Programme for the next three years
In January we published the agreed Selection Exercise Programme for 2010-11. The selection exercise programme is agreed with the Ministry of Justice every year and comprises the essential selection exercises needed to fill judicial vacancies forecast by Her Majesty’s Court Service, Tribunals Service and other tribunals. Some changes to requirements in-year are inevitable as forecasting can not be an exact science.
We are now in a position to go a step further. In the next few days we expect to publish a future programme that outlines the expected cycle of exercises that will run over the next three years. This future cycle will no doubt be subject to some refinement over its lifetime as requirements change but it represents a significant step forward in forecasting and planning. Knowing the cycle of major recruitment exercises will also benefit candidates by giving them greater certainty of when particular roles are likely to be available and allow them to best plan their application for a judicial role.
You can see the forthcoming 2010-11 programme here
There will be a link from this page to the longer term programme once it is published at the start of next week.
Feedback Report on the Qualifying Test
The comments we receive from candidates following qualifying tests is that they would welcome feedback so that they can use it to develop and be more successful if they decide to apply again. The sheer number of applications we receive means that we cannot provide individual feedback following a qualifying test. We have decided to publish a Qualifying Test Feedback Report and the test paper for candidates in the Recorder (Civil) qualifying test and will consider doing this for future exercises. The JAC considers that the Feedback Report should help candidates prepare for the test in a way that individual feedback or scores cannot. This was placed on our website yesterday.
The Report along with a short Q&A can be found here
Qualities and Abilities
And finally, our Chairman will shortly be writing to share a new ‘Leadership and Management’ quality and ability that the Judicial Appointments Commission proposes to add to those we currently use when making selection decisions. Our experience has shown that there is an increasing emphasis on the importance of leadership and management within a number of judicial roles. While the Commission does currently assess leadership and management skills under the existing quality and ability of ‘Efficiency’, we are of the view that it is now sufficiently important for this to be separated out into a new, additional quality and ability.”
