2.1 SSPO Structure: 74 Questions in 35 Minutes

SSPO Structure: 74 Questions in 35 Minutes

Quick Answer: Part B of the OACP Certificate testing is the SIGMA Survey for Police Officers (SSPO) — a single 74-question, 35-minute multiple-choice assessment split into Section A: Incident Report Writing Aptitude (44 questions covering spelling, vocabulary, and grammar/punctuation) and Section B: Police Problem-Solving (30 questions built around short scenarios and maps). There is no separate quantitative-reasoning section — the math you’ll see is folded into Section B, and no calculator is permitted.

The SSPO is built around one idea: a patrol officer's most important daily tool is language, not a calculator. Officers write incident reports that get read by supervisors, Crown attorneys, and sometimes a judge, and they make fast decisions with limited information. The SSPO tests both halves of that job in a single sitting, under real time pressure, which is exactly why it feels so different from a typical high-school or college test.

Section A: Incident Report Writing Aptitude — 44 Questions

Section A is the larger of the two sections and is built from three sub-skills that all feed one goal: can you produce, and recognize, a clean and accurate written report?

The spelling block alone accounts for 28 of the 44 Section A items, so it carries real weight in that section — but vocabulary and grammar/punctuation split the remaining items and are just as scorable once you know the recurring patterns (word roots, homophones, subject-verb agreement, apostrophe rules). None of these questions ask you to compose your own sentence; every item is multiple-choice or yes/no, which means the skill being measured is recognition under time pressure, not free writing.

Section B: Police Problem-Solving — 30 Questions

Section B presents short written scenarios — sometimes a paragraph describing an incident, sometimes a simple map showing streets, an intersection, or the location of a suspect relative to responding units. Each scenario is followed by one or more four-option questions, and your job is to choose the response that is most correct, not necessarily the only defensible one. Distractors are usually reasonable-sounding but miss a detail supplied in the scenario — the wrong priority, the wrong order of operations, or a choice that quietly ignores officer or public safety.

Applied math lives inside Section B rather than in a section of its own. SIGMA’s official study guide is direct about the level involved: calculators are not permitted, so you must be comfortable with mental arithmetic and pen-free basic calculation, and candidates should be able to perform addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division with whole numbers. The guide names the specific practical calculations you may encounter:

• Averages
• Percentages or fractions
• Elapsed time or distance — for example, "if a suspect left at 2:14 p.m. travelling at 40 km/h..."
• Money
• Unit conversions — for example, centimetres to metres
• Geometry — area, perimeter, or volume formulas for common shapes

SIGMA adds that these questions may also require you to interpret numerical information and apply basic mathematical concepts to everyday scenarios, and that the skills required "are generally comparable to those encountered in everyday life and are not intended to assess advanced mathematics."

There is no separate stand-alone quantitative-reasoning section on the current SSPO - the two sections are Incident Report Writing Aptitude and Police Problem Solving, full stop. Earlier stages of Ontario’s constable-testing pipeline, under the previous Applicant Testing Services system, used separate analytical-reasoning instruments; the SSPO does not. Don’t over-invest study time chasing advanced algebra or trigonometry - but don’t assume the math has disappeared either. Chapter 8 drills each of the six calculation types above, all of them without a calculator.

The 35-Minute Clock

Both sections share a single 35-minute timer for all 74 questions — there is no separate time allotment carved out per section.

Twenty-eight seconds per question is tight, and SIGMA describes the SSPO as a timed assessment designed to measure decision-making under time constraints. Neither OACP nor SIGMA publishes the scoring formula, a completion rate, or any statement about how many items applicants typically reach, so treat any prep source that quotes such a figure with suspicion. What the official guidance does say is concrete and more useful: manage your time carefully, return to difficult questions later if needed, and avoid random guessing because incorrect answers are penalized while unanswered ones are not. In practice that means moving briskly through items you recognize immediately, declining to guess blindly on items that are genuinely unclear, and returning to skipped questions only if time remains.

Why the Split Matters for Your Prep

Because Section A (44 questions) makes up close to 60% of the SSPO, time spent sharpening spelling, vocabulary, and grammar recognition pays off across the largest share of the test. Section B (30 questions) rewards a repeatable reading process: read the scenario once for the gist, read it a second time for detail, scan all four options, and eliminate any that ignore information the scenario already gave you. Treat the two sections as two different skill sets that happen to share one clock, and practice each with its own strategy rather than one generic "test-taking" approach borrowed from school exams.