The results are in...

Earlier today the EPO published the official results and the examiner's report of the first ever EQE pre-exam. The results have turned out to be completely different from what we are used to in the EQE. The guinea pigs of this first year's pre-exam show an astonishing passing rate of 98.7%. Only 5 out of 390 candidates did not manage to score at least 50 out of 100 marks. Four candidates did not make any error at all.

With an average score of 84.1, a median score of 87 and almost every candidate passing, the pre-exam seems to have failed its main objective. According to the exam committee, the goal of the pre-exam was to filter out the ill-prepared candidates and serial resitters that take up so much of their valuable correction time (and energy).
However, the current results can only be interpreted in two ways. Either the pre-exam was too easy and the ill-prepared candidates will sit the main exam in 2013 with the usual lack of preparation and a little bit more confidence, or there never have been many ill-prepared candidates and the low pass rates for the main exam are primarily caused by difficult exams.