Police promotion is tough. And it’s about to get tougher with the (temporary) introduction of SIPP in a year or two.
For now, Sergeants and Inspectors across England and Wales, except those in SIPP trial forces must complete the National Police Promotion Framework (NPPF) four step process:
- Step 1: Demonstrate competence in current rank (PDR, performance, attendance, conduct, etc. all in order)
- Step 2: Legal exam
- Step 3: Force selection process
- Step 4: Temporary promotion and work-based assessments (12 months)
Steps 1 and 4 are pretty straightforward for candidates. The real challenge comes in the middle, with a pass mark to hit on the exam of law and procedure, then a competitive assessment in your force. However, there’s help and resources along the way.
“Well, tests ain’t fair. Those that study have an unfair advantage. It’s always been that way.” – Allen Dare Pearce
In this ‘stats corner’ blog, I share key facts about the NPPF exam and how it compares to the SIPP exam, then get stuck into some record-breaking stats and force comparisons from the results from the Spring 2026 exams. You can also access my prior reviews of legal exam results here on this blog.
Candidates know the Blackstone’s books and revision support they can get to navigate the exam hurdle. And Rank Success exists to help you with interviews, applications, leadership development, and the raft of other assessments that come with the tougher competition of Step 3 police promotion.
If you passed your exam, want to develop your leadership skills, or are even just thinking about promotion, why not tune in to the Number 1 police promotion and leadership podcast? Then when you’re ready to prepare more intensively for your process, dive into my premium rank-specific toolkits (exclusive discount on request for podcast subscribers), and/or contact me for a free 30-minute coaching call and to answer any questions.
Now let’s start with some key facts about the promotion exam…
Key Facts About the Police Promotion NPPF Step 2 Legal Exam…
What exactly is NPPF Step 2? Run by the College of Policing, it’s a mandatory test of legal and procedural knowledge that you must pass if seeking promotion to Sergeant and Inspector. As such, there’s an Inspectors’ exam and a Sergeants’ exam.
The exam is designed to ensure aspiring leaders in the Federated ranks have the legal knowledge required to supervise and guide others effectively, for example when supervising investigations (a top PEEL inspection theme for improvement). Fast Track candidates must also complete the exam.
Conducted online, there are 150 multiple choice questions, of which 140 are scoring (the other 10 are test/validation questions). Candidates have 3 hours to complete the test, which must be done in one sitting. The legal exam syllabus is drawn exclusively from the Blackstone’s Police Manuals. The College offer a 30% discount code to officers for these.
You’re not allowed to access what the College calls “reference materials” while taking the exam online (e.g. the Blackstone’s Manual or your own cue cards). You can’t even make hand written notes. The College in turn warn that such cheating or copying/disclosing any part of the exam will result in an automatic failure, referral to your force Professional Standards, and/or being banned from taking the exam for a few years.
“The exam is designed to test whether a candidate has the legal knowledge needed to perform successfully in the next rank. If a candidate chooses not to learn this information and instead relies upon looking it up, this is unlikely to be an effective way of passing the exam or embarking on a career at the next rank.” – College of Policing guidance
You can take the exam while pregnant or on maternity / paternity leave if you wish. However, it’s a bit more complex for those on overseas duties and career breaks. Suspended officers need Chief Officer signoff if they want to complete the exam.
The NPPF Step 2 legal exam is too big a hurdle for half of officers who attempt it. The Sergeants’ exam pass mark is 55% (77 / 140). The Inspectors’ exam is a more stringent 65% (91 / 140) and attracts a higher failure rate.
Since 2023, there’s been two chances a year to attempt the exam, to try and improve inclusion and address the failure rates. Exams are run twice yearly for each rank, typically March and October for Sergeants and May / November for Inspectors. The next Sergeants’ exam is on 6 – 8 October 2026, while the Inspectors’ exam (registration is open now!) takes place between 3 – 5 November 2026.
Results are generally published within three weeks of the exam. Once passed, the result is valid for 5 years. That means you must successfully complete Step 3 within this window.
How Does the SIPP Legal Exam Compare?
SIPP (Sergeant and Inspector Promotion and Progression) is the new, more complex promotion framework set to replace NPPF. For the latest and most comprehensive information on this secretive scheme, please refer to my dedicated SIPP FAQs post.
The SIPP process itself has not yet been assessed on its effectiveness. It’s not known whether it costs more or less than NPPF, whether it’s better or worse, fairer or not, and so on. The trials lack standardisation as forces are encouraged to take a ‘pick and mix’ approach. The College calls this ‘iterative development’ of the scheme.
Regardless, it has been officially decided: SIPP is doomed to succeed; the Police Leadership Commission even said so.
SIPP has already been consigned to the history bin before even getting off the ground. This is just a temporary solution, as the Leadership Commission declared. It’ll be back to the drawing board for something better than both the NPPF and SIPP for around 2030, just enough time for forces to run one or two SIPP-based promotion processes for each rank, before it’s all change again.
With regards to the SIPP legal exam, the original ambition for SIPP was to scrap this barrier altogether, to try and enhance minority ethnic diversity in particular. Later, the College decided that a formal test of legal knowledge remains an important standard to maintain for police leaders.
After some ‘iterative development’, the SIPP exam came to fruition. It’s a scaled-back version of the NPPF exam. There are 80 multiple choice questions for the 2 hour Sergeants’ exam and 40 questions for the 1 hour Inspectors’ exam.
The syllabus has been scaled back too, to focus on the most relevant legal and procedural knowledge for each rank. All the syllabus content is again in the Blackstone’s Manuals.
The SIPP exams take place on the same dates as the NPPF exam. They too last for 5 years, are completed online with the same rules and have the same pass mark (55% Sergeants, 65% Inspectors), there’s two chances to take the exam per year, and it’s still a mandatory element to the promotion process.
Next, let’s explore the NPPF exam pass rates and diversity…
Sergeants’ NPPF Exam Spring 2026 Pass Rates
The College publish the latest NPPF legal exam rates on its website. For SIPP exam results, as with SIPP documentation generally over the past few years, the College don’t openly publish such information, so we cannot draw exact comparisons. However, a couple of examples from their FOI disclosures (available up to June 2025) suggest the SIPP Sergeants’ exam pass rate is overall similar to the NPPF Step 2 exam.
A surge of aspiring Sergeants passed the exam this year. Of 3,215 candidates, nearly 59% of them passed, a rate not seen since 2021. A decent wedge of candidates (12%) even achieved the exceptional score of over 75% for their exam.
When it comes to diversity, the College report pass rates for the protected characteristics of Sex and Race. I’ve been tracking trends in these for several years, as shown below…
While all categories of these protected characteristics improved on last year, the pass rate for minority ethnic officers leapt to a record high of 54%.
Female officers continue to outperform all other groups, with 62% of the 1,001 women passing. For those women officers now looking to the next steps, my dedicated 4-part free blog series may be of interest.
The College also publish pass rates by force. You must be careful drawing conclusions from the smaller candidate numbers per exam for some smaller forces. However, the higher-scoring forces tend to do well year on year.
Thames Valley Police, Merseyside, and Staffordshire are examples of larger forces who tend to score particularly well for the Sergeants’ legal exam. West Mercia, Surrey, Lincolnshire and Warwickshire tend to do pretty well too.
The Met Police again had the lowest pass rate among its 1,148 candidates who took the Spring 2026 exam. But this is much improved on its rates since 2023. Other forces propping up the table were Wiltshire, Leicestershire, South Yorkshire, and Dorset.
Avon and Somerset Police aren’t reported here because their candidates instead took the SIPP exam, and the College don’t publish information on that. In the ‘pick and mix’ approach to SIPP, other trial forces seem to have their candidates continue taking the NPPF exam (else we wouldn’t get force-level NPPF exam results for them).
Now let’s see what happened with the Inspectors’ exam this year…
Inspectors’ NPPF Exam Spring 2026 Pass Rates
As mentioned, the fewer candidates tend to pass the Inspectors’ legal exam, mainly owing to the higher pass mark required (65%, vs. 55%). In the Spring 2026 exams, only 37% of the 1,739 candidates made the grade.
Again however, this represents an uptick in performance compared to the Autumn 2025 exam results, particularly for minority ethnic candidates. Female officers continue to outperform their male counterparts, as do the White demographic vs. Minority Ethnic candidates, as per the protected characteristics reported by the College.
Force comparisons look a bit different at the Inspector level. Bedfordshire, City of London, and Lincolnshire all show 100% pass rate, but beware this is based fewer than 10 candidates in each force. Only Bedfordshire show consistent high grades for the Inspectors’ exam, averaging nearly 70% success rate since 2021.
North Wales, Northants, and Wiltshire also scored well, albeit those forces’ results tend to fluctuate each year.
At the other end of the scale, Cumbria and Warwickshire had a lower pass rate than the traditionally-low Met Police, although note the very low (<10) candidate numbers for these forces. Warwickshire candidates normally do well on prior years’ Inspector exams. Dyfed Powys also had low candidate numbers.
Exam results were relatively low too in South Yorkshire, Essex, and Hampshire. These forces also have tended to score poorly on this exam in recent years.
Passed Your Police Promotion Legal Exam? Here’s What’s Next…
If you’ve passed your exam, congratulations. And be aware if you didn’t pass last time, setback is only temporary and you have another chance coming soon.
The next stage of promotion is harder, because unlike the exam you’re also in competition with other candidates. You’re not alone if you’re bewildered by interviews, application forms, presentations, scenarios, or other assessments forces are constantly trialing!
This is where Rank Success levels the playing field and makes sense of all this academia.
First, a tough message no officer likes to hear: Whatever you plan to do, I recommend doing at least as much work as you put in to pass the exam.
The weeks of revision, practice questions and so on. Why wouldn’t you invest as much effort preparing for a more nuanced and competitive assessment as you did on the (relatively more straightforward) black and white, right or wrong answer tick-box test?
Your exam result lasts for 5 years, which will presumably be honoured when SIPP takes over, then too with whatever new framework comes afterwards to replace SIPP within that time frame. But most aspiring cops won’t want to wait that long.
Here’s an outline plan depending on the time you have until your force assessments:
- 6-12 Months: RELAX. Read my free blogs. Listen to my free podcast interviews with Chief Officers. Watch my free videos. Reflect on your leadership.
- 3-6 Months: BEGIN. This is an ideal preparation time frame. Start building your evidence in advance. Download my free guides. Subscribe to my premium podcast for more in-depth police leadership and promotion topics. Familiarise yourself with the CVF. Call me for free 30 mins guidance.
- 1-3 Months: PREPARE. Download my premium, rank-specific toolkit (example evidence, CVF explainers, role explanations, promotion masterclass video, approaches to various assessments, etc.) to take you through the key stages (discount for podcast subscribers). Apply the learning to your own force process. Consider whether you need a couple of hours additional bespoke coaching.
- 1-4 Weeks: INTENSIFY. Hone and refine your evidence. Practice. Coaching / mock board support is on hand if you need, along with my application review services to help you refine your final draft.
- <1 Week: READY! Final reviews / recap. Focus on the key points in my ‘Shortcut to Success’ section outlined in each rank-specific digital guide. Call me with any last minute questions or concerns. Relax the day before your board. Listen to my ‘On the Day’ podcast.
“Steve, for the second time in 3 years: thank you, thank you and thank you.” Rob – Passed Chief Inspector
While it’s perfectly achievable (and many have done so before you with Rank Success support) to succeed if you’ve waited until your force promotion process has been announced. But there’s no reason to wait, start hustling now.
You can make the decision to start preparing today, take charge of your glide path to a successful outcome. Undecided? Why not give me a call? I love what I do and whilst you can take action now with Rank Success resources supporting effective preparation, I also offer a free 30 minute coaching call to discuss your specific situation.
And if you really think you’ve left it too late, I receive those calls too. There’s a way you can get match fit more quickly if you can protect time to focus and prep around key points. My ‘Shortcut to Success’ section included in the digital toolkits will help with that, while I offer more secrets to success in coaching calls.
“Just a quick email to say passed my board! Thank you for all your products and free inputs. I bought your guides and found them really helpful. I also watched all your YouTube videos, they are great, particularly the ones on CVF. Exam to inspector board success in 4 months is not bad! I’ve passed your details to the 3 aspiring sergeants on my team who have boards in the next month! Thanks again.” – Jo
I hope you have found this blog insightful. Wherever you are on your leadership development path, I wish you the all the best.
Kind Regards, Steve
Seeking police promotion? Want a MASSIVE head start right now and a focus on what matters? Hit the ground running with my great value digital promotion toolkits, and/or my market-leading Police Promotion Masterclass, seminars and CVF explainers. There’s nothing else like it to effectively prepare you for success and level the playing field of promotion. My timeless methods translate to all UK promotion processes. Any questions? Get in touch for a free call or to arrange more personal coaching support tailored to your specific force process. Tune in to my extensive podcast for regular powerful leadership CPD and promotion insights.