PSET Guide: The Police Scotland Entrance Test
The PSET replaced the three-paper SET in June 2020. What the one-hour paper holds now, what the old sample papers still get right, and what they get wrong.
Search for Police Scotland entrance test practice and most of what comes back describes a test that no longer exists. The Standard Entrance Test was three separate papers with a heavy spelling and grammar section. Since June 2020 candidates have sat the Police Scotland Entrance Test instead: one paper, one hour, and a language element that looks nothing like the old one.
What changed in 2020, and again in 2021
Until May 2020 Police Scotland's own selection page listed three specimen papers for the SET: language, number and information handling, each sat as its own 30-minute paper, in ink and without a calculator. By August 2020 the same page described "our new Police Scotland Entrance Test": one paper of 57 questions in 60 minutes. Between June and October 2021 the count dropped to 49, and it has stayed at 49 since.
Police Scotland's current description is short: "one examination paper with three core elements - numeracy, literacy and information handling. You will be required to answer 49 questions in 60 minutes. You must pass all three elements of the PSET examination paper." Special constables sit the same paper.
Two consequences follow for anyone preparing. Guides that still say 57 questions are describing the 2020 version. Guides that describe three papers, or quote pass marks of 30 out of 40, 13 out of 20 and 16 out of 24, are describing the SET. The name has lingered too: two of Police Scotland's own reasonable adjustments pages still call it the Standard Entrance Test, which is part of why the old material keeps circulating.
It is still a paper test
The PSET did not move online. Police Scotland says the paper is "handwritten selection of multiple choice answers or answering in free text boxes", completed "in ink under exam conditions". Its own mock paper tells you to circle your answer and, if you change your mind, to delete it fully and circle the new one. There is no screen, no timer on a monitor and no progress bar: an invigilator keeps the time.
That matters more than it sounds. Most answers are written rather than chosen, so there is no list of options to work backwards from. And reading a table printed on paper, with a pen in your hand, is a different physical task from tapping through one on a phone. At least one full practice paper should be sat at a desk under a 60-minute clock.
Where the old sample papers still help
Numbers. The SET's number paper covered money, percentages, ratios, speed, distance and time, clock times and durations, and scales. Police Scotland's current mock covers the same ground: a difference in speeds, officers needed at one per 2,000 spectators, added weights, weekly payments over several weeks, a sentence reduced by 25% written in years and months, and a distance covered in 15 minutes. Old number papers are still good practice.
Information handling. The SET paper gave four tables or charts with six questions each. The current mock's table of offences against sentencing outcomes is a rework of the old specimen's own sentencing table, and its questions are the same mix of finding a figure and working something out. The official example chart, full-time and part-time officers in five divisions, has gridlines every 10 and no values printed on the bars, so you read each value off the scale.
Where they will mislead you: language
The SET language paper was 40 marks, and 28 of them were spelling, grammar, a gap-fill and putting jumbled sentences in order. Prep sites still describe the PSET's language element that way. Police Scotland's own PSET examples do not show any of it. Both of its published documents show two question types, both about a short passage:
- True, false or not possible to say. "Please indicate whether you think the statement below is TRUE, FALSE or whether it is NOT POSSIBLE TO SAY from the information provided."
- Short answer. "Give one word or a short phrase in answer to the following question. Where appropriate, you may use any words or phrases from the passage you have read in your answer."
One long-standing Scottish prep provider calls the current element "less grammar-based", which may leave room for the odd grammar question, but nothing official shows one. Spend your language preparation on reading passages and judging statements, not on spelling lists.
The trap in the statements is the same one every verbal reasoning test uses: a statement that is true in the real world, or sounds like common sense, but is not settled by the passage. If you cannot point to the sentence that decides it, the answer is not possible to say. For the short answers, the instruction is doing you a favour: copy the passage's own words, and where it asks for several things, give all of them.
The pass marks, and what we actually know
Police Scotland does not publish the PSET's pass marks. The widely quoted figures, 30 of 40, 13 of 20 and 16 of 24, belong to the SET, where they were set deliberately above half. The "62.5%" some sites quote looks like the pass mark for the probationer examinations at Tulliallan, not the entrance test.
What is published is the pass rate. A freedom of information request by the Scottish Police Federation's magazine found 78% of candidates passed in 2022/23, 87% in 2023/24 and 94% in 2024/25. So the paper screens out a small minority, and for most people who fail, one element is the reason, because each is passed separately and a strong total cannot rescue a weak one.
The calculator question
Sources disagree. Police Scotland's reasonable adjustments pages say "You will be provided with a calculator." Several candidate guides say calculators are not allowed, one adding that they were allowed at first and the rule changed. The adjustments paragraph still uses the old SET name, which suggests it may be out of date. The safe preparation is to practise without one: the official mock's numbers questions are all doable by hand, and if a calculator is provided on the day you have lost nothing.
Where it sits in the process
The PSET is the second stage, after the application form and before the multi-stage fitness test (to level 5.4) and the assessment day. The assessment day now includes a situational judgement exercise, but it is put to you verbally by assessors and answered aloud, so a written situational judgement test is not preparation for it. Applying to a force in England or Wales is a different process with its own online tests; our College of Policing practice covers those.
For the PSET itself, our Police Scotland practice tests give you each element as a drill and the full 49-question paper on one clock, with each element shown against the last published bar so you can see which one needs the work.