Life in the UK test · The test

What is on the Life in the UK test: 24 questions, 45 minutes, 18 to pass

Twenty-four questions in forty-five minutes, every one of them based on a single book. You pass at 75 percent, which is 18 correct, and there is no other threshold to clear.

24 questions18 to pass45 minutes
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The test, as GOV.UK sets it

Every line here is GOV.UK's own statement. None of it is inferred.

One number: 18 of 24

GOV.UK gives the pass mark as a percentage, 75 percent or more. On a paper of 24 questions that is 18 correct, and it means you can get six wrong and still pass.

There is only that one figure. GOV.UK publishes no section you have to pass on its own and no chapter that carries extra weight. Eighteen correct answers anywhere on the paper is a pass.

Six wrong out of 24 is not a lot of room, though. A quarter of the paper is all you can afford to miss, which is why people who know the handbook well still revise it.

Where the questions come from

GOV.UK is unusually direct about this: you will only be tested on information from the official handbook. Nothing outside the book can come up, and nothing is set regionally. The book is one book for the whole United Kingdom.

The whole book counts, the introduction included. The handbook says so itself in its first chapter: the questions in the real test will be based on the whole book, including that introductory chapter.

What the Home Office does not publish is how the 24 questions are spread across the five chapters. Preparation publishers estimate a split, and those estimates tend to agree that history carries the most, but an estimate is not a published weighting.

What GOV.UK has not published

  • The real questions. Any list online that claims to be them is not published by the Home Office.
  • How the 24 questions are split across the handbook's chapters.
  • A waiting period before you can sit the test again. GOV.UK says only that you can rebook as many times as you need, paying each time.

Questions about the questions

How many questions do you need right to pass the Life in the UK test?

18 out of 24. GOV.UK says you must score 75 percent or more to pass, and 75 percent of 24 questions is 18. You have 45 minutes for the whole test.

Are the questions on the Life in the UK test multiple choice?

Yes. The test is 24 multiple-choice questions on British values, history, society and government, all based on the official handbook.

Are the real Life in the UK test questions published?

No. The Home Office publishes the handbook the questions are based on, and the official publisher sells revision questions and mock tests, but the questions in the real sitting are not published anywhere.

Which chapters of the handbook are on the test?

All five, including the introduction. GOV.UK says you will only be tested on information from the official handbook, and the handbook's first chapter says the questions will be based on the whole book.

There are 464 practice questions in the app.

464 questions, drilled chapter by chapter in the handbook’s own order, five a day with the ones you miss coming back, a mistakes deck, and a full mock that is the real thing: 24 questions in 45 minutes, pass or fail at 18.

Written by Belong UK from the official handbook, not by the Home Office, and checked by someone other than the person who wrote each one. The real sitting uses its own questions.

Download Belong UK on the App StoreComing to Google Play. Sign up for free

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More on the Life in the UK test

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