Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

Could you pass the UK citizenship test?

Try this little guardian quiz to see.

For the record, no I didn't. Deport me somewhere nice and warm, near a beach please.

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Permalink Reply by JulieB on October 11, 2011 at 21:49

Really stupid questions - but I would say that after failing miserably.

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Permalink Reply by Maddy on October 11, 2011 at 22:07

Looks like I'm out, too! I had to guess over half of these anyway. What a load of baloney - very few questions that actually demonstrate an understanding of British culture or the structure of government, or what you need in order to live here, just facts and dates that you could mug up and forget the minute you leave the test. There was a piece on Today the other morning about how many of the questions are either out of date, or they actually want the wrong answer.

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Permalink Reply by Hugh on October 11, 2011 at 22:45

By way of comparison, it's worth Googling 'Life in the UK practice tests' and looking at some of the representative practice tests that are freely available online

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Permalink Reply by Liz on October 11, 2011 at 23:13

These are all questions taken from the Life in the UK test, here's another one with most of the same questions, perhaps the Guardian has been a bit sneaky in putting in so many of the barmy questions, or maybe not. I did a couple of these online practice tests and although I passed, I didn't get 100% (driving questions always stump me because I don't drive). Although I don't agree with Stephen about Boris, I do agree that the questions seem to be abnormally interested in promoting government policy rather than national identity.

Compare with the American test which seems to concentrate far more on the basics of how government works, some simple history and geography, a bit of principles of democracy (which, of course, some kind souls laid out for them a few hundred years ago, unlike here). I might get myself deported to California as I reckon I could pass their test much more easily.

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Permalink Reply by Malc B on October 12, 2011 at 9:52

I had to sit this silly test, and the Guardian's selection of questions seems representative to me. They missed the question about how the Prime Minister may be dismissed, in which all answers were arguably correct, and the one that was least correct was the one the test deemed correct; they also missed the one about the minimum wage, where there were no correct answers as it had gone up twice since the test was set and never updated (Home Office advice, on their website, learn the incorrect answer, as that's the only one that the test will accept - it's all computerised).

But the questions in the article give you a flavour of how silly they are - as someone has already commented, the EU question is silly. Also q 22 (which asserts that the UK has one of those un-legal, un-amended constitutions and, of course, none of it is written down anywhere); q 13 is misleading. The answer to q20 is surely 1086; the answer to Q22 is actually 22% although the basis for this statistic is seriously questionable. The answer to Q3 is most State Schools charge fees (aka "compulsary donations"). The answer to Q12 is false, not true. I'm also not sure that q21 actually offers a correct answer.

Question 18 is good logically though: if b) is correct, then a) must also be correct. So there is only one possible answer that has only one of (a) and (b) being correct - therefore they've gifted you an answer. Of course that assumes that they realised this when they set it - I gambled that they didn't so got the question wrong! (still sure they didn't realise).