UK Citizenship exam.

Some of you may have read that Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, had stated that the Citizenship exam was difficult and even Harry had problems answering the questions. Out of interest, I downloaded an app for cramming and mock exams. You must score 75% or more to pass the test. I have done the test 4 times and passed once. It is definitely difficult. How many of you know when the Bronze age started (without Googling)? 5,000, 4,000, 3,000 or 2,000 years ago?
Now I consider myself reasonably intelligent but I would be struggling to get citizenship if I was an Afghan or a Syrian refugee.

 

I think as with all exams you do a bit of research before taking them.
I have no idea what kind of questions they ask, but I'm sure most people who intend taking it will have some idea.

 

My wife passed her citizenship exam 17 years ago this month. If the exams were as hard then as what they are now, plus the costs just for the sake of a British Passport, we would of not went through the citizenship process. Twenty years ago, a citizenship application fee was £120 now its £1330.

 

What bearing does that knowledge have on whether your going to be a good citizen or not.

 

I'm a thick git so i wouldn't past any exman now, but do you have a corse before the exman so they tell you the answer anyway and all you have to do is remember them

 

Well, as usual these things start out with people being expected to know the normal ways of life in this country and how to integrate, dare I say it.

But then the really clever people get involved and they start to put in stupid questions that interest them.
You can imagine some history professor at a university being asked to come up with some relevant questions to ask, and his head would be full of this kind of stuff.

Just out of interest, was it only Britain that was involved in the bronze age, I mean didn't other parts of the world get involved.

 

No, you are allocated 45 minutes to do the test,which is £50 per sit, you must have also passed an English Language test £150 per sit. Your exam paper will consist of 24 questions with each question having four different answers to choose from. There are only 30 test centres in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. There is one in Cumbria, Carlisle, but when my Mrs had to do it we had to go to Newcastle.

You have to purchase an official book to study, but you have to make sure your studying the most up to date edition. Others like myself who have married a foreign national outside the EU and commonwealth, believe these fees and hoops we have to jump through are nothing but a cash cow for the government. They could not control who entered the UK from the EU or the thousands crossing the channel illegally, yet to control net migration the government have targeted non EU citizens with the extortionate fees.

Below is a link to some of the fees, there are other fee's for tests, biometrics etc etc.


Briefing: How expensive are UK immigration applications and is this a problem? - Free Movement

 

The thing I don't get about the British Citizenship test is, I thought it was supposed to assess how well a prospective British citizen would fit in.

So who wrote it?

Surely it should have been a committee of ordinary people? I presume instead it's been written by the most archaic of Eton educated senior politicians.

I don't care when the bronze age started. I bet very few regular folk do. Surely it would be better to try to guage how they view other people, what criteria they use to respect others, how they view people's rights and responsibilities. That sort of thing.

 

This is supposedly to be the set of questions that Meghan Markle had to answer. I am 100% sure these will not be the same questions now, as they have been made public.

Quiz: Take Meghan Markle’s UK citizenship test

No cheating by taking multiple goes, did you fail or pass, I failed.

 

18 of 24 pass
I'm not so thick

 

I got 22 out of 24 genuinely without cheating. That's nearly 92%

To be honest I found it pretty easy. This isn't the test I'd heard and read great mockery of.

 

Do a bit of research? For my French nationality I had to do two years of studies on history, geography, culture, law and citizenship. There was a list of more than 100 possible questions that could be asked by the interviewer. Had to take and pass a language exam, too.

 

That's what's known as citizenship here but there's also an element of how the applicant views their host country, it's laws and customs. Seems reasonable....

 

I believe it rolled out across Europe from the East; also it wasn't one year Neolithic next year Bronze Age it was a gradual process as people and ideas moved backwards and forwards.

 

Yeah, thought it was something like that, dont remember it myself.