Sir: At present, only candidates who fail the College Membership examination are provided with performance feedback. The feedback is most useful, detailed and helpful in illustrating not only areas of weakness but also positive aspects in the failed performance. The information provided is invaluable to one's success in future attempts.
We believe that it is equally important that successful candidates are given the same opportunity to scrutinise their performance through similarly constructive feedback from the College.
The margin between success and failure may be only slight in a sizeable minority of cases and it is clear that, even after a success, room for improvement remains. With a detailed breakdown of one's performance, there could be at least some pointers for future learning.
We should stress that this suggestion is made with the intention of enhancing one's knowledge of one's abilities, certainly not to provide grounds for appeal nor to provide information for the construction of specialist registrar league tables! There is, naturally, a possibility that such a move may result in the deflation of one's moment of triumph. However, this can be avoided by allowing sufficient time between the euphoria of success and arrival of the detailed feedback for the successful candidates.
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