School Safety Agent:
exam timing and pacing

Seconds per question, section by section

100 questions over 137 minutes averages out at about 82 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 72 seconds a question. Inductive Reasoning is the loosest at roughly 90. Problem Sensitivity carries twelve questions here, two more than on the Police Officer exam, and it is the section school work turns on.

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 6324–6326. 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 100 questions and the 137 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

Take a single section against a clock first, on its own. 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 72 seconds a question.

Then sit all 137 minutes in one go, at least a week before the real one. A school corridor gives you seconds to decide whether what you are looking at is a scuffle or a crowd forming. That is what most of these nine abilities are asking about.