NIE Pass Rates
2021 to 2026

Pooling the sittings in each calendar year smooths out the swings between individual papers. Each year's figure is the passes divided by the candidates for the sittings we have in that year, so years with missing sittings are less complete.

The honest reading is that the NIE pass rate has sat in a band from the low fifties to the mid sixties for five years, with no steady rise or fall. Single sittings jump around more than years do: November 2025 at 51.9% was followed by March 2026 at 63.7%. Anyone who tells you the exam is "getting harder" or "getting easier" from one sitting is reading noise.

Each overview gives success rates for female and male candidates and for white and ethnic minority candidates, with the group sizes. The table copies the successful share for each group, with the number of candidates in brackets. The College groups "not disclosed" and "prefer not to say" differently from one sitting to the next, so we have left those groups out rather than mix definitions.

What the figures show

• Ethnicity. In every one of the 17 sittings, the printed success rate for candidates from an ethnic minority group was lower than for white candidates. The gap ranged from 4.4 to 21.5 percentage points and was 4.4 points in September 2026. Ethnic minority groups are small in each sitting (between 90 and 192 candidates), so single-sitting gaps move a lot; the consistency across sittings is the stronger signal.
• Sex. No consistent pattern. Women had the higher rate in 6 sittings and men in 11, and the difference was never more than 9.3 points.
• Causes. The overviews give none, and we do not offer any. The College states that it collects these figures to monitor potential barriers. If you want support, ask your force's NIE liaison contact or staff network what is available; some forces run targeted study support, but we have not verified which.

Some printed pairs do not add to exactly 100% (November 2023 shows 46.7% unsuccessful and 53.8% successful for women); we copy the successful figure as printed. Group sizes do not always add up to the sitting total because undisclosed groups are left out.

The national figures cannot answer these, but your NIE liaison contact, crime training team or tutor often can:

• When is our internal registration deadline for the sitting I am aiming at?
• Do we get study time, and if so how much, and when in the run-up?
• Is there a force or regional study group, crammer or mock exam I can join?
• Does the force provide a quiet testing room on exam day if home is not suitable?
• What is our policy on resits: when, how many, and what support comes with a second attempt?
• If I am on a direct entry or Police Now route, what happens to my programme if I do not pass first time?
• How do I get reasonable adjustments in place, and by when?
• Who will see my result, and how does it feed into my PIP2 portfolio?

Our direct entry detective guide covers the route-specific questions in more depth.

We downloaded every NIE results and analysis overview we could find on the College's asset server and in the Internet Archive, converted each PDF to text, and copied the figures. For the force tables we used a script that reads each row, then checked that the rows add up to the printed total once suppressed rows are allowed for, and that every printed rate equals passed divided by sat. No figure on this page is estimated.

Check any figure yourself

1. Open the PDF from the "Source" link in the history table (or the sources list at the foot of this page).
2. On the "Results" page, the pie chart gives successful and unsuccessful counts with percentages; the bar beside it splits successful into exceptional and pass.
3. Exceptional plus pass equals successful. That check is how we confirmed which printed number is which, because the charts' labels do not always line up when the PDF is converted to text.
4. The total row at the foot of the force table gives sat, passed and the rate; it matches the charts in every overview we read.
5. In the sex and ethnicity bars, the first figure is the unsuccessful share and the second the successful share. In the sittings we tested, multiplying each successful share by its group size and adding them reproduced the total passed, to within rounding.
6. Force rows with "xx", "XXX" or "0.00" are suppressed counts, not zeros.

When the College publishes the overview for the next sitting, the data files behind this page are updated and every table and sentence here changes with them. Spotted a figure that does not match its PDF? Tell us through our corrections policy.