National Firefighter Ability (NFA) Tests Practice
The three paper tests of the UK National Firefighter Selection process: Working with Numbers, 32 questions in 45 minutes; Understanding Information, 25 in 30; and Situational Awareness and Problem Solving, 30 in 35. They are sat at a fire service, with no calculator. Many services now use online tests from Test Partnership, Talogy, SHL or Arctic Shores instead, so check your invitation first.
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NFA Understanding Information
Twenty-five questions in 30 minutes on six short documents: memos, notices, safety leaflets, newsletters and manual extracts. Find what the document says, spot the false statement or the one not mentioned, and pick the best summary, using the document alone.
NFA Situational Awareness and Problem Solving
Thirty short situations in 35 minutes, on duty and around the station, each with four things you might do. It asks what you would do, but it is marked: one answer is counted correct, and the key follows a few steady rules about safety and reporting.
NFA Full Written Tests
All three National Firefighter Ability tests in the order they are sat: 87 questions under three separate clocks, 110 minutes of testing, with an untimed break between tests. Each test is reported as a T-score on the official 2005 table, with your weakest test named.
Check who sent your invitation
The NFA tests are paper tests at fire service premises. If you have been sent a link to an online test, you are almost certainly sitting a vendor's test, even if the careers page still calls it the national firefighter test: Oxfordshire's "National firefighter online psychometric tests" run through Test Partnership and Apollo, and Jersey's "National Firefighter ability tests" are SHL's. Read the sender of the email, not the name on the careers page.
Test Partnership
The most common vendor for UK firefighters, at least sixteen services: the FRS Ability Tests (numerical, verbal and mechanical) and the Assessment for Firefighter questionnaire.
Invitations come from no-reply@testpartnership.com
Test Partnership practiceTalogy (formerly PSI)
The FRS Behavioural Styles Questionnaire and a situational judgement test, at some services on the Apollo platform.
Invitations come from noreply-apl@talogytech.com
Cubiks and Talogy practiceSHL
Used at Cleveland, which names SHL’s UK Firefighter Talent Screener and its Deductive Reasoning and Calculation tests, and at South Yorkshire and Surrey.
SHL practiceArctic Shores
Game-based assessment, used at Hampshire and Isle of Wight and at the first stage in West Yorkshire.
Arctic Shores practiceOur Test Partnership practice covers its general ability tests, not its fire service versions, which run on a short clock per page with a calculator allowed for numbers. Read its FRS candidate guide as well if that is your test.
The three tests
From the December 2009 technical manual and the national practice booklet. A trained administrator reads the instructions aloud and works one example before each test, and there is a visible clock in the room. No knowledge of firefighting is needed: you answer from the information on the page.
| Test | Questions | Time | What is on it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Working with Numbers | 32 | 45 minutes | Six fire service scenarios of five or six questions each, set out as gauges, tables, graphs and plans. You add, subtract, multiply, divide and estimate without a calculator, and some questions offer "Cannot say" as one of the four answers. |
| Understanding Information | 25 | 30 minutes | Six short documents, such as fire safety information, memos, newsletters and training manual extracts, with four or five questions each. Every question gives four statements and one is right: what the document says, which statement is true or false, what is not mentioned, or the main point. |
| Situational Awareness and Problem Solving | 30 | 35 minutes | Thirty separate situations, on duty and around the station, each with four things you might do. It asks for your most likely response, but it is marked: one answer to each question is counted as correct. |
| In all | 87 | 110 minutes | Sat in turn on paper, each test on its own clock, with a short break between them. Four options, a to d, one mark for each right answer and nothing taken off for a wrong one. |
Working with Numbers
32 questions in 45 minutes
Six fire service scenarios of five or six questions each, set out as gauges, tables, graphs and plans. You add, subtract, multiply, divide and estimate without a calculator, and some questions offer "Cannot say" as one of the four answers.
Understanding Information
25 questions in 30 minutes
Six short documents, such as fire safety information, memos, newsletters and training manual extracts, with four or five questions each. Every question gives four statements and one is right: what the document says, which statement is true or false, what is not mentioned, or the main point.
Situational Awareness and Problem Solving
30 questions in 35 minutes
Thirty separate situations, on duty and around the station, each with four things you might do. It asks for your most likely response, but it is marked: one answer to each question is counted as correct.
In all
87 questions in 110 minutes
Sat in turn on paper, each test on its own clock, with a short break between them. Four options, a to d, one mark for each right answer and nothing taken off for a wrong one.
Three things most guides get wrong
They are no longer the national test
The last official documents are the December 2009 technical manuals. Most English services now sift wholetime applicants online with a vendor's tests. The NFA tests survive mainly for on-call recruits and in Wales.
There is no published pass mark
Figures such as 60 to 70% have no official source. Each test is converted to a T-score and the three are looked at together, under rules each service sets for itself.
There is no calculator
The booklet says you will not be allowed one, only paper for rough working. Test Partnership's online numerical test for fire services allows one, so a candidate who prepared for one test can meet the other.
How the tests are scored
Every test gives one mark for each right answer, takes nothing off for a wrong one and has one keyed answer to every question, Situational Awareness and Problem Solving included. Speed earns nothing beyond the questions you reach, so never leave one blank.
Each test's raw score is converted to a T-score, where 50 is the average and 10 points is one standard deviation, using norm tables the technical manual publishes for a 2005 sample of firefighter applicants. The average applicant in that sample got about three-quarters of Working with Numbers right (23.6 of 32) and about two-thirds of the other two. So full marks on Working with Numbers is only a T-score of 62.5: these tests separate candidates at the bottom more than at the top.
No pass mark is published. The booklet says each test "is assessed separately, but will be looked at together to form an overall measure of your suitability", and each service decides how.
The raw score that reaches each T-score
| Test | T 40 | T 50 | T 60 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Working with Numbers (of 32) | 17 | 24 | 31 |
| Understanding Information (of 25) | 13 | 17 | 22 |
| Situational Awareness and Problem Solving (of 30) | 16 | 21 | 25 |
Working with Numbers (of 32)
- T 40
- 17 right
- T 50
- 24 right
- T 60
- 31 right
Understanding Information (of 25)
- T 40
- 13 right
- T 50
- 17 right
- T 60
- 22 right
Situational Awareness and Problem Solving (of 30)
- T 40
- 16 right
- T 50
- 21 right
- T 60
- 25 right
Worked from the manual's published means and standard deviations, which every row of its norm tables matches. A T-score between 40 and 60 covers roughly the middle two-thirds of applicants.
Our results show your number right, your T-score on the official table and what its band means, give or take the test's measurement error. Two caveats come with every result: our questions are new, written to the same specification, so the T-score assumes our paper is about as hard as the real one; and services do not publish a pass mark, so we show no pass or fail either.
Who still uses the NFA tests
From the services' own careers pages, read in October 2026. Each one is named, with its source, under "Companies that use" further down.
England
Mostly for on-call firefighters. North Yorkshire (unless you are exempt through qualifications), Northumberland and Warwickshire sit on-call applicants on the written tests, Warwickshire using only numbers and information, and Northamptonshire’s 2025 wholetime recruitment day had a written assessment on the same three areas plus equality, diversity and inclusion. Most other English services sift wholetime applicants online with a vendor’s tests, and London Fire Brigade runs its own process.
Wales
All three services, at least for on-call. North Wales calls them the Working with Information Tests and uses them for wholetime and on-call; Mid and West Wales sets on-call applicants a 45-minute written paper "in accordance with" the national tests; South Wales’s 2023 information books describe them for both routes. An online questionnaire and situational judgement test often come first.
Scotland
No written psychometric test. The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service screens application answers on an AI-enabled platform, then runs practical selection tests, which it says may include tests such as numeracy.
Northern Ireland
Not the NFA tests. The Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service uses Test Partnership’s Assessment for Firefighter and a mechanical reasoning test.
On-call versions vary: some services use all three tests, some only numbers and information, and some one shorter combined paper. Our practice runs the three national tests at full length, because the cut-down papers are local and unpublished.
Where the written tests sit in the process
1. Application and online sift
An application built around the firefighter qualities, often followed by an online behavioural questionnaire and situational judgement test from a vendor.
2. The written tests
The NFA tests or a service’s version of them, at fire service premises: at a practical day, a recruitment day or your local station, often alongside the physical tests. This is the stage our four practice tests cover.
3. Physical tests
The national physical tests: ladder climb, casualty evacuation, ladder lift, enclosed space, equipment assembly and equipment carry.
4. Interview
An interview against the firefighter qualities, or a strengths-based interview at some services.
5. Final checks
Some on-call routes add dictation and memory recall tests read aloud by a person. Then a medical and pre-employment checks.
The National Firefighter Questionnaire (NFQ)
The NFA tests were designed alongside a behavioural questionnaire: 127 statements, each answered on a five-point scale from Strongly disagree to Strongly agree, untimed but about 40 minutes, and scored towards seven of the nine qualities the firefighter role is assessed against. Where it is used, results are compared with other applicants and considered alongside the rest of the process.
We found no current service page that lists it as a stage. North Wales still links its practice booklet beside the NFA booklet, and the national booklet describes a session that includes it. Where services name a questionnaire now, it is Talogy's Behavioural Styles Questionnaire or Test Partnership's Assessment for Firefighter. We do not simulate the NFQ.
One thing worth knowing if you do meet it. Its booklet advises you to "try not to use the middle box 'c' unless you have to", and the comparison group's average answer was between about 4.0 and 4.5 out of 5 on every scale: it agreed strongly with almost everything. That is a reason to commit to an answer rather than sit on the fence. It is never a reason to describe yourself as someone you are not, so answer as you are.
How our practice works, and what is not published
Our questions are new, written to the published specification. The real question booklets are confidential and held by the services. We write our own scenarios to the counts, times, formats and themes in the technical manual and the practice booklet, so a T-score from our paper assumes it is about as hard as the real one.
The comparison group is from 2005. The norm tables were last revised in December 2005 and are the only applicant figures ever published. Our results say so whenever they use them.
The split inside Situational Awareness and Problem Solving is ours. Since 2005 the manual has recommended marking the two qualities separately, but it does not say how many questions each gets. We use an even split and report each half, which is our choice, not the real paper's.
Understanding Information is 30 minutes. The booklet's section page says 35, but its introduction and the manual say 30, and 35 is the next test's time. We use 30.
Every clock is visible and strict. The room has a visible clock, so ours shows one. When a test's time runs out it is handed in and you cannot go back, and in the full session you can stop only between tests.
A phone is not a booklet and an answer sheet. Our tests work properly on a phone, but the real ones are printed, with rough paper and no calculator. Sit at least one full test at a desk with a pen and paper before the day.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do all fire and rescue services use the NFA tests?
No. A minority still do, mostly for on-call firefighters and in Wales. Most English services now sift wholetime applicants with online tests from a vendor such as Test Partnership, Talogy, SHL or Arctic Shores. Scotland uses no written psychometric test, and Northern Ireland uses Test Partnership.
Can I use a calculator in the NFA tests?
No. The national practice booklet says you will not be allowed a calculator but will be given paper for rough working. Test Partnership’s online numerical test for fire services is the opposite and allows one, so check which test you are sitting.
What is the pass mark for the firefighter written tests?
None is published. Each test’s raw score is converted to a T-score on the technical manual’s tables, and the booklet says the three tests are looked at together to form an overall measure of your suitability. Each service sets its own rules. Figures such as 60 to 70% on prep sites have no official source.
How many questions are there, and how long do I get?
Working with Numbers is 32 questions in 45 minutes, Understanding Information 25 in 30 minutes, and Situational Awareness and Problem Solving 30 in 35 minutes. Each test has four options per question, one mark for each right answer and nothing taken off for a wrong one.
Is Situational Awareness and Problem Solving actually marked?
Yes. It asks what your most likely response would be, but the booklet is clear that there is one correct answer to each question and one mark for each correct response. The keyed answers put people at risk first, do not trade away safety, and report hazards straight away.
Are the NFA tests online?
No. They are paper booklets with an answer sheet, sat at fire service premises with an administrator who reads the instructions aloud. A test you take online at home is almost always a vendor’s, even when the careers page still uses the old national name.
Is it different for on-call firefighters?
Sometimes. Some services use all three tests, some only numbers and information, and some one shorter combined paper, such as Mid and West Wales’s 45-minute written test. The cut-down papers are local and unpublished, so practise the full national tests.
What is the National Firefighter Questionnaire?
A 127-statement behavioural questionnaire that was designed alongside the NFA tests, answered on a five-point scale and untimed. We found no current service page that lists it as a stage. Where services name a questionnaire now, it is Talogy’s Behavioural Styles Questionnaire or Test Partnership’s Assessment for Firefighter.
If I do not get through, can I try again?
The national booklet says to wait at least three months before reapplying to any fire and rescue authority. In practice services recruit in campaigns, so the next chance depends on when your service opens again.
Can I take the tests in Welsh?
South Wales and Mid and West Wales say they offer their tests in Welsh. Our practice questions are in English.
Companies That Use the National Firefighter Ability tests
The NFA tests are not sold to employers. They are the paper tests of the National Firefighter Selection process, Crown copyright, and a minority of UK fire and rescue services still sit candidates on them, mostly for on-call firefighters and in Wales.
North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service
Government & Public SectorOn-call recruits sit the written tests at their local station unless exempt with maths and English qualifications, and the linked practice booklet is the NFA booklet.
Northumberland Fire and Rescue Service
Government & Public SectorOn-call applicants sit the Firefighter Ability Tests, and the on-call page links the NFA practice booklet covering all three question types.
Warwickshire Fire and Rescue Service
Government & Public SectorOn-call applicants sit written assessments in Working with Numbers and Understanding Information on a set date at a venue the service chooses.
North Wales Fire and Rescue Service
Government & Public SectorWholetime applicants sit the in-person Working with Information Tests (understanding information, working with numbers, problem solving), and on-call applicants a written ability assessment on numbers and written information.
Mid and West Wales Fire and Rescue Service
Government & Public SectorOn-call applicants sit a 45-minute written ability test, held in Division, set in accordance with the National Firefighter Selection tests.
South Wales Fire and Rescue Service
Government & Public SectorIts 2023 wholetime and on-call information books describe numerical and Understanding Information ability tests sat in person.
Northamptonshire Fire and Rescue Service
Government & Public SectorIts 2025 wholetime recruitment day included a written assessment on working with numbers, understanding written information and awareness of situations, plus equality, diversity and inclusion.
Most English services now sift wholetime applicants with online tests from Test Partnership, Talogy, SHL or Arctic Shores, Scotland uses no written psychometric test and Northern Ireland uses Test Partnership. Check who sends your invitation: an online test at home is almost always a vendor's, not the NFA tests.
Guides and Tips
Read up before you practise: what the tests reward, what catches candidates out, and why shortcuts do not work.
Can You Cheat the NFA Firefighter Tests?
Printed booklets, handed out and collected by an administrator in a fire service room. Why there is nothing for a shortcut to attach to in the NFA tests.
UK Firefighter Written Tests: The NFA Paper or a Vendor's Online Test?
The national firefighter selection tests are no longer national. Most services now sift online with a vendor, and the old paper tests survive mainly for on-call recruits and in Wales. Which one you face changes everything from the calculator to the answer format.
Practice by Test Type
Compare the same format across every provider that uses it, and see what each one is really measuring.
Numerical Reasoning Test Practice
Tables, charts, percentages and ratios against the clock. The most common screening test on graduate schemes and analyst roles.
Verbal Reasoning Test Practice
Short dense passages and true, false or cannot say answers. Judged on what the text supports, never on what you already know.
Situational Judgement Test Practice
Realistic workplace scenarios scored against an employer competency framework. No maths, no time pressure, and a scoring key you can reason about.
About CogniPrep UK Firefighter Practice
CogniPrep provides simulations of the National Firefighter Ability (NFA) tests, the written ability tests of the National Firefighter Selection (NFS) process. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister funded them, the consultancy Water for Fish developed them, and Communities and Local Government published them, Crown copyright, with the last technical manuals issued in December 2009. Services call them the written tests, the written assessment, the Firefighter Ability Tests or, in North Wales, the Working with Information Tests. They are not the US National Firefighter Selection Inventory or National Firefighter Selection Test, which are unrelated American tests with a similar name.
- 4 practice tests available: NFA Working with Numbers, NFA Understanding Information, NFA Situational Awareness and Problem Solving, NFA Full Written Tests
- Real tests: 32 questions in 45 minutes, 25 in 30 and 30 in 35, on paper
- Four options, one mark per right answer, no deduction, no calculator
- Each test converted to a T-score on the 2005 norm tables; no published pass mark
- Used mainly for on-call firefighters in England and by all three Welsh services
- The national booklet asks you to wait three months before reapplying
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