To ask for advice please re CSCS card test

[Snooks1971]

Huge apologies for using AIBU.

DS 17 has got a CSCS test this Wednesday before he starts work as a FT painter/decorator in an industrial setting.

He’s been doing online revision and scores well. The Q is: will the 50 questions be from the tests he’s being doing online, or will they be from a bigger ‘bank’ of questions that he may or may not have revised?

This is all very quick, he’s decided with our support not to undertake his second year of college and is being taken on by someone we know to learn a skill from scratch. His employer is on holiday this week and we don’t want to bother him. Google isn’t helping.

There are hundreds of questions so yes, he may get questions that he hasn't seen. In all honesty though, it's pretty much common sense so if he's done some practice tests I reckon he'll be fine. I passed mine first time quite a few years ago with not much revision, but that's because the questions were pretty simple, multiple choice questions.

Thank you @StrangeCondition that’s really helpful. So I guess it’s best to keep doing different mock tests from now on from different sites. Agree about common sense approach though!
Thank you for your reply.

Bigger bank. Has he got the official Citb resources? Pass mark is 45/50 so quite high. The lads I work with usually fail because they : rush it, dont fully read the question and dont read through all the answers before picking one. I tell them to use a process of elimination, you usually get 2 totally stupid options, 1 right option and 1 nearly right option, so I get them to discount 2 answers first then choose between the remaining 2. Hope it goes well for him.

If you get him to download the app he can run though all test questions, go back to the ones he got wrong and do mock tests. It costs £7 or so and he needs to make sure that he is choosing the correct test. I did my test last week, there are always a few questions that can trip you up, as PP said there are hundreds of questions but the app has all of them . Good luck to him .

This one

Yes, if he is doing the op test, it should say on his booking confirmation .

I would recommend the official CITB app (make sure that he downloads the official CITB one, and for the correct test). It’s £6.99 but from my experience the questions in the app are identical to those in the test and you can do all of the practice questions at least once in a couple of hours. With enough practice it’s not difficult. About 90% of the questions are common sense but 10% you just need to know (e.g. colours of fire extinguishers). The people that tend to fail are the ones that underestimate the test and then get an unlucky proportion of non-common sense questions (the pass mark is quite high).

Took my smart ds a second test to pass!
Keep revising op's ds!!

It’s always the colours of fire extinguishers that catch people out! 😂

They're all red nowadays..

Yes, but with different coloured labels

Thank you - I agree, I’ve been sitting longside him when he does the mock tests - itching to point out the obvious - I keep saying: it’s H&S… report, report…tell supervisor etc, no winging it.
Some we’ve googled though. I’d never heard of silica dust and my Dad (retired) was a builder.

Thank you! Will download it. He’s had a really unfulfilling year at college and is desperate to succeed at this x

Thank you all so much!

this is who is test is booked with:

constructioncertification.co.uk/?msclkid=6d58bb55362d1d9ee546d97a1ddde3dd

Has he done the health and safety training day?

He needs the full app and to do all the questions in the app, they're broken up into different sections. You can do them over and over again and it will work out an average for passing etc.

The app makes it easy to pass! I resat mine last year after 5 years and passed.

DP used to supervise the tests.

The people who failed were largely the ones who were dickheads unwilling to listen to instructions such as 'no mobile phones in the test room' or 'your test is at 10.35am, arrive 15 minutes before with your ID - driving licence, passport and your booking confirmation'. So the ones most likely to be a dangerous liability onsite in the first place.

No he hasn’t…it’s all been so fast.

That’s encouraging! He’s desperate to do well and pass this to move on to the next stage

Downloaded and iPad is charging - thank you

He needs to do both parts to send off for the card..there's a test at the end of the training day that he needs to pass too but less questions, still multiple choice. In some areas there are organisations that put young people through both parts fully funded, so if he doesn't pass it might be worth looking at that?

Ah - so he needs to do a training day as well as the actual test (2 different things?)

Yes so if you look below the video on this link www.cscs.uk.com/applying-for-cards/ he will need to scan in his certificate from the training day when applying for his card, after he's passed the touch screen test. There are lots of providers offering it virtually which might be quicker. Its basically a classroom day on all the material he is now revising with a little test at the end.