Name/Title
Brighton Borough Police Certificate for Police Qualifying Examination 1942Entry/Object ID
2215Description
Certificate on board printed "County Borough of Brighton, Police qualifying examination. Constable to Sergeant This is to certify that Police Constable No.219 Francis Walton has obtained a Pass in the Above Examination." Followed by handwritten marks awarded in five subjects, then handwritten "Passed with Distinction" and dated "31st March 1942".Use
To confirm a constable has passed the qualifying examination to sergeant.Context
In order to gain promotion to sergeant police constables have long had to pass an exam or exams. In the past these exams tended to differ from police force to police force but what is interesting is that they did not simply concentrate on police related subjects or the law but included more general topics, as demonstrated in this particular 1942 exam certificate for Brighton Police. Here the supplementary subjects included: arithmetic, English, geography, and general knowledge.
After the Second World War a process of more standardisation with promotion took place and eventually national exams for both sergeants and inspectors were introduced. These involved only information regarding the law and policing. The syllabus for both was contained in a large book called "The Manual of Guidance", which included a vast amount of detail particularly in relation to traffic and road policing. These exam formats continued until the early 1990s when new national police promotion exams were introduced called "OSPRE". These involved a two part process of a written multiple choice exam, using a more streamlined syllabus, and upon passing that, a practical based exam consisting of a number of assessed scenarios.
By 2023 moves were in place to replace OPSPRE exams with a promotion process involving a staged approach to assessment, moving away from exams.