Environmental Police Officer:
exam timing and pacing

Seconds per question, section by section

110 questions over 142 minutes averages out at about 77 seconds each, and that average describes almost none of this exam. Comfortable in one section, brutal in the next. Knowing which is which before you sit down is most of what pacing practice buys you.

Where it squeezes

Written Expression is the tightest section here, at about 70 seconds a question. Visualization is the loosest at roughly 80. Every section here runs between seventy and eighty seconds a question. There is no section that will run away from you.

The section that will beat you is written expression. Reading faster does not fix that; deciding faster does. Nothing is deducted for a wrong answer here, so a marked guess and a candidate who has moved on beats a perfect answer that cost two other questions.

What the City publishes, and what is ours

DCAS names 9 abilities for this title, in Notice of Examination 6304, 6305. What the notice does not give is a question count or a time limit, for this title or any other. Nobody outside the City has those two numbers, so a site quoting them is quoting a guess.

The 9 sections above are the City's. The 110 questions and the 142 minutes are ours. We picked them so the practice sitting feels like the real thing, and we would rather tell you that than let you assume the City set them.

How to practice the clock

Start with one timed section rather than a full paper. A full sitting tells you your score. A single timed section tells you where the score came from, and here that means finding out what written expression feels like at 70 seconds a question.

Then sit all 142 minutes in one go, at least a week before the real one. The setting is a reservoir, a watershed and the roads around them. If you have practiced the School Safety Agent exam, the abilities match and not one of the worked examples will.