About the College of Policing National Sift

What the National Sift Is

The College of Policing National Sift is the standardised first online assessment used in police constable recruitment in England and Wales. It is designed and supported by the College of Policing and sits at the front of the wider online assessment process. When people talk about “the sift,” “the national sift,” or “the online assessment,” they are usually referring to this same gate: a fair, national measure of whether your judgement and behavioural style meet a national standard before you progress further with a recruiting force.

The sift is not a knowledge exam about criminal law, PACE codes, or force policy. You are not expected to recite statutes or describe how a custody suite works. Instead, the assessment asks how you would respond to realistic workplace and public-facing situations, and how you typically behave and prefer to work. That design opens the door to applicants from many backgrounds—career changers, graduates, apprenticeships, and people with limited public-sector experience—while still screening for the professional behaviours policing needs.

Geographic scope

This guide covers the England and Wales national sift for police constable entry routes that use the College of Policing process. Scotland and Northern Ireland run separate recruitment systems. Always follow the instructions from your recruiting force and the official candidate materials (College of Policing National sift Candidate guidance and Join the Police), because force-level logistics (application portals, windows, and communications) can vary even when the sift itself is national.

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Where the Sift Sits in Recruitment

Think of recruitment as a sequence of filters. A simplified path looks like this:

1. Application to a force (or via a national campaign) — eligibility checks, forms, and basic screening.
2. National Sift (SJT + BSQ) — the first online assessment stage you prepare for in this guide.
3. Further assessment if you meet the national standard — commonly a competency-based interview (CBI) and other force or College process steps as directed.
4. Later stages (medicals, vetting, fitness, and force-specific requirements) before an offer and training.

Passing the sift does not guarantee a job. It means you have met the national standard for this stage and can move forward. Failing (or “not met”) means you do not progress on that attempt and must follow resit rules if you reapply later. Later chapters cover scoring, percentiles, and resits in detail; for now, understand that the sift is an early, high-stakes filter designed to be consistent across forces.

Why a national, free online stage exists

Forces need a common way to compare large numbers of applicants on behaviour and judgement, not just CVs. A national online sift:

• Standardises early assessment so candidates are measured against shared criteria.
• Reduces unfair advantage for people who already know policing jargon or local procedures.
• Scales to high volumes of applications without requiring every candidate to attend a physical assessment centre first.
• Remains free for candidates — there is no candidate fee to sit the national sift itself.

That last point matters for planning: your cost is time and preparation quality, not an exam voucher. Use official free practice on the assessment platform and structured free resources (including this guide and site practice) rather than paying for “secret answer keys” that claim to decode the scoring algorithm.

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Two Untimed Exercises: SJT and BSQ

The national sift consists of two exercises. Both are untimed. You control pace within your assessment window and platform rules. Approximate timings from official guidance are planning aids only—not hard clocks.

Treat the timing figures as typical, not limits. Because the exercises are untimed, rushing is a self-inflicted risk. Equally, overthinking every item for hours can create fatigue and inconsistent answers. Aim for steady, careful work: enough time to read fully, not so long that you second-guess your natural judgements on the BSQ.

Situational Judgement Test (SJT) in brief

Each SJT item presents a realistic scenario—often a workplace or public-contact situation a new constable (or someone working with the public in a professional policing context) might face. You then see four possible actions. For each action you rate how effective that action would be, independently, on a five-point effectiveness scale (from counterproductive through to very effective). Official guidance emphasises that:

• You rate each action on its own — not as a forced rank of “best to worst” only.
• You may give the same rating to more than one action if they are similarly effective (or similarly poor).
• You need not use every point on the scale if some ratings do not fit.

The SJT is mapped to six CVF competencies at level 1 (practitioner):

• We analyse critically
• We are innovative and open-minded
• We take ownership
• We are emotionally aware
• We collaborate
• We support and inspire

You do not need to label each scenario with a competency while sitting the live assessment, but learning what good level-1 behaviour looks like is the core of preparation—later chapters drill each competency and common scenario themes.

Behavioural Styles Questionnaire (BSQ) in brief

The BSQ presents statements about behaviour and preferences. You respond on a seven-point scale of agreement (how true the statement is of you). The platform may also ask you to rank certain statements as most like you. The BSQ assesses the same six competencies and also the three CVF values:

• Courage
• Respect and empathy
• Public service

The BSQ is not a “trick personality quiz” where you invent an ideal officer. Official guidance and good preparation practice stress honest, consistent self-description. Trying to game every statement toward a stereotype of a “perfect cop” often produces inconsistent patterns that scoring systems are designed to detect. Later chapters cover honesty strategy in depth.

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What Success Means at This Stage

Results are produced automatically. Your SJT and BSQ performance is combined and compared against a comparison group to produce an outcome against the national standard (met / not met), typically with a feedback report by email. Exact percentile mechanics and resit rules (including the typical three-month wait and maximum two attempts in any 12-month period, redoing both exercises) are covered in the logistics chapter—do not invent pass marks or cut-scores beyond what official materials state.

For this introduction, hold three ideas:

1. The sift is a behaviour and judgement filter, not a law exam.
2. It is free, online, and untimed, with two complementary exercises.
3. It is the first online assessment stage for many constable routes in England and Wales; passing unlocks the next steps (often including a competency-based interview), not an automatic appointment.

How this section connects to the rest of the guide

• Next section: eligibility notes, CVF level 1 as the criterion, and what is not tested.
• How-to-use section: a study path from CVF fluency → SJT mechanics → scenarios → BSQ honesty.
• Later chapters: full logistics, each value and competency, SJT scales and traps, scenario themes, and integrated prep.

If you remember only one sentence from this section: the National Sift is a free, untimed, two-part online assessment of CVF level-1 judgement and behavioural style for police constable recruitment in England and Wales—not a test of police procedure.