Group Bourdon Pass Mark, Scoring and Time Limits Explained

None of the sources we checked publishes a Group Bourdon pass mark, and there is no single one. RSSB says RIS-3751-TOM issue four does not set pass marks: RSSB has recommended them, and each train company decides which it uses. The OPC adds that some companies use a higher, "enhanced" standard. If The OPC assesses you, you are not told your scores. Here is what is known, and how to judge your practice.

Updated for RIS-3751-TOM issue 4 (published 7 December 2024). The official points on this page were checked against RSSB, assessment-centre and train company documents on 23 October 2026; our own advice is labelled as ours.

ProSyllabus is an independent study site. It is not part of RSSB, the Office of Rail and Road, The OPC or any train company, and nothing here is official test material.

RSSB's FAQ, question 28: "RIS-3751-TOM issue four does not set pass marks. RSSB has recommended the pass marks, but it is the responsibility of the train company to determine which pass marks are used." The OPC fills in the rest: RSSB has recommended a "national minimum standard" that candidates must achieve on each test, while some companies use a higher standard, or add tests, called an "enhanced" standard. There is no one enhanced standard: each organisation sets its own.

So the honest answer to "what is the pass mark?" has two parts: the national minimum on each test, which The OPC does not give to the candidates it assesses and which is not in any source we read, and the company's own, which may be higher. The OPC answers the question "What scores are needed to pass the tests?" with "This information is not provided to you." The Train Drivers Academy, the site RSSB points candidates to for the role, says performance is assessed using standardised scoring and that some operators may require an enhanced level.

The OPC publishes one list, of organisations that gave permission to be named. It is dated 1 September 2020, so names and standards may have changed since; ask the company. Two current pages agree with it: Northern says its assessments must be passed to an enhanced standard, and Avanti West Coast says it uses enhanced standards.

Why it matters: The OPC says that if you fail a company's enhanced standard but pass the national standard, you could re-apply to a different company without waiting, while a failure to the national standard means a minimum wait before applying anywhere. The full rules are in our guide to pass rates and retakes.

The standard names one criterion for it: attention. RSSB's table lists the "Paper Group Bourdon" under attention, next to TEA-Occ. No source we read publishes how it is scored. What the sources do say points one way:

Our reading, not a published rule: when time is called, a sheet shows how far you got, the fours you marked, the fours you passed and any marks on groups that are not four, so speed and accuracy are the likely ingredients of any score. Our worksheet below uses exactly those counts. How they are weighted, whether there is a penalty for wrong marks, and whether steadiness across sheets counts, is not in any source we read. What candidates report is forum-reported: one 2017 post on a train driver forum describes five sheets of dots (sometimes letters), boxes with several dots each, each box of four dots circled, and two minutes a sheet.

No official source we read gives the number of sheets or the time per sheet; the forum post above is one person's account from 2017, and your approved practice materials and the instructions on the day are what count. Research on vigilance in general, not on the Group Bourdon, describes a "vigilance decrement" in performance and finds that keeping attention on such tasks is hard mental work (Warm, Parasuraman and Matthews, 2008). In practice: judge yourself on your last sheet as much as your first. Our trainer compares your first half with your second for this reason.

If you practise on paper, score each sheet the same way every time. Set a timer, mark as you go, and when time is up draw a line after your last mark. Then count only up to that line:

Boxes after your line are "not reached", not errors: counting them as misses would punish you twice for being slow. Keep missed and wrong marks apart. They have different fixes, explained in how to pass the Group Bourdon: 11 techniques.

We cannot tell you what score passes: candidates are not given the scores needed (The OPC), and none of the sources we read states them. What we can give is our own target, clearly ours. Our trainer marks a level cleared when, over a full run, your accuracy is at least 95% and you reached at least 60% of the groups. The table shows the pace that reaches 60% if you use each sheet's full time, rounded up to a whole number of groups a minute.

These are targets for moving up our levels, not a prediction of a result on the day. The Group Bourdon is a paper test, while our trainer is on a screen, so compare yourself with yourself on the same medium.

If The OPC assessed you, you will not be told a score: it says candidates are not given any scores, as required by bodies including the British Psychological Society and the Rail Assessment Centre Forum. If The OPC assessed you, you can ask it for verbal feedback within 3 months; where the company uses an enhanced standard, it can tell you whether you met the national standard. Then the attempt rules apply: for GB mainline candidates starting from 7 December 2024, three failed attempts end the process; attempt 2 comes at least a year after failed attempt 1, and attempt 3 at least five years after failed attempt 1 and at least a year after failed attempt 2 (RSSB). Translink in Northern Ireland has its own policy. Details, a date checker and a 12-month plan are in train driver assessment pass rate and retake rules.

For practice, start with Group Bourdon practice and a 14-day plan; for the other paper attention test, see the TEA-Occ test; every test is in our train driver psychometric tests hub. Our guides on this assessment are collected on the UK train driver exam page.