The national investigators' exam pass mark, explained

The numbers

The plain meaning of that: you can get 31 of the 70 marked questions wrong and still pass. It's a lower bar than it sounds when the number is quoted on its own as "55.7%".

Source: College of Policing NIE candidate handbook 2026, "Pass mark". PDF.

How the marking actually works

You sit 80 multiple-choice questions in two hours. Afterwards, 10 of those are removed from marking — specifically the worst-performing questions in that sitting, the ones that turned out not to distinguish candidates who knew the material from those who didn't. You're never told which 10 were dropped, you receive no score for them either way, and there's no route to appeal which questions were removed or how they were chosen. Every candidate's result is then calculated out of the remaining 70.

There's no partial credit and no negative marking, which has one practical consequence worth stating plainly: an answer you guess costs you nothing extra if it's wrong, but a question you leave blank scores exactly the same zero as a wrong answer. Never leave one unanswered.

Source: College of Policing NIE candidate handbook 2026, "Examination structure and syllabus" and "Pass mark".

A fixed cut, not a curve

39 out of 70 is a fixed threshold written into the handbook — it does not move to keep a set proportion of candidates passing or failing, and your result does not depend on how anyone else sat that same paper on the same day. Get 39 or more and you pass, regardless of the national pass rate for that sitting.

One caveat, from the handbook itself: the College's debrief panel can alter the pass mark in exceptional circumstances — where a sitting's success rate deviates significantly and there is evidence a change would produce a fairer outcome. The published figure in the current handbook is 55.7%.

That national pass rate does move sitting to sitting, though, and it's worth knowing roughly where it sits — the College's own results reports have shown it as high as 63.7% (March 2026). For the fuller picture of how hard the exam actually is in practice, see how hard the NIE is.

Source: College of Policing, NIE results and analysis overview, March 2026 (PDF).

Results and the feedback report

Results are issued within about three weeks of your sitting, via the exam portal, alongside a candidate feedback report. That report summarises your final grading and total percentage score, and identifies strengths and developmental needs across the areas examined.

No certificate is issued for the NIE — the feedback report is the only official record that you passed, and it cannot be reissued if you lose it. Keep your own copy somewhere safe as soon as it lands.

Source: College of Policing NIE candidate handbook 2026, "Results" and "Feedback".

What the pass mark implies for revising

Because the pass mark is a single total rather than a minimum in each area, the exam's own weighting does some of the planning for you. The four areas make up roughly 31, 23, 13 and 13 of the 80 questions sat — and even the largest area on its own isn't enough to pass: getting every one of those 31 right still leaves you eight short of the 39 you need. There's no way around needing at least workable competence in the smaller areas too.

Run the arithmetic the other way and it gets sharper still: write off one of the 13-question areas entirely and treat it as a guessing game, and the other three areas — 67 questions between them — now have to produce your 39 marks on their own. That's around 58% of what's left, a noticeably higher bar than the 55.7% you're actually trying to clear. Skipping a small area doesn't save you proportionate effort; it raises the effective pass mark on everything else.

That's arithmetic about the weighting, not a claim about how anyone should study — but it's a reasonable case for breadth over chasing perfection in one area.

Source: College of Policing NIE candidate handbook 2026, subject area breakdown, March 2026 — 31/23/13/13 of 80 questions across the four syllabus areas.

Frequently asked