New police assessment exercises

Interesting bit of news. Since the police assessment system started, the scenarios have changed on 1^st November, and remained the same throughout the year. As we have always said, this leaves the system with a huge flaw in it. As the scenarios are the same for all English and welsh forces (including BTP etc), this meant that some 14000 people every year would do the SAME exercises, word for word. For the avoidance of doubt, the role plays, written exercises and interviews are all identical for a 12 month time period.

This of course completely undermines the assessment. In a closed community like the police, people who are for example, Special Constables or CSO’s naturally talk about the exercises. Our sources for example mean we always find out the new exercises within days of them being released, as students seek feedback from us on their performance. (And why shouldn’t they?)

Sure, the assessment centre staff make you sign a disclaimer saying you will not tell anyone, but once you have passed, how likely is that to happen? Even more bizarrely, some candidates who had their assessment on say Nov 1^st and failed it, would reapply again six months later and find they were doing the SAME assessment.

So, three years and 42000 candidates later, the National Policing Improvement Agency has finally decided to switch the assessments to………six month changes. This stops candidates doing the same assessment again, but still leaves 7000 people free to blab about the exercises by the time the changeover happens. We find this nonsense.

But the best part is WHY they have done this. Some candidates were putting the scenarios up on youtube!!! Hello NPIA, and you are surprised by this why exactly?

The whole system is undermined by this lazy approach to new scenarios. My tip? If you want to have a look at what exercises are coming up, do a good search on youtube.

Uncategorised · ·  no comments »