Editorial and fact-check policy
Last updated: 29 September 2026
PassNova publishes practice questions for 149 UK exams and qualifications, some of them in areas where a wrong fact matters: safety, health care, immigration and professional licensing. This page explains how the questions are written, what checks they pass before they reach you, and what we do when something is wrong.
Where the content comes from
Each course is written against the current published syllabus, specification, handbook or exam outline from the awarding body or regulator for that exam. Where a fact comes from law or official guidance, we check it against the primary source (for example legislation, GOV.UK or the regulator's own guidance) rather than a secondary summary.
130 course pages link to the awarding body, booking page or official free practice for that exam, so you can check the source for yourself. PassNova is independent and is not endorsed by any awarding body. Exam names are used only to describe what the practice is for.
We do not publish "brain dumps" or questions copied from live exams. Every question is written to test the published syllabus.
How AI is used
We use AI assistance to draft most of our question banks, explanations and study guides. The drafting works from the official syllabus for the course, and every draft goes through the automated checks and review passes described below before it is published.
New and changed courses reach this site only when PassNova's owner releases them. No question bank is published to the site automatically.
Nova, the AI tutor in Premium, writes its replies live. Those replies are not individually reviewed, so check anything important against the course material or the official source.
Automated checks on every question bank
Every bank is scanned by our question-bank QA checker each time the site is built, and again whenever a change to a bank is committed. If any of the following is found, the build or commit is refused until it is fixed:
| Check | What it catches |
|---|---|
| Wrong answer key | Worked sums in the question are recalculated and compared with the marked answer. |
| Two right answers | Two options that say the same thing, including equal values written differently (3/12 and 1/4). |
| Duplicate or broken options | Repeated options, an answer index that points nowhere, or marked text that does not match the key. |
| Explanation contradicts the key | The explanation works out one answer while a different option is marked correct. |
| Authoring leftovers | Draft notes, reasoning or placeholders left in a question or option. |
| Answer-letter skew | Correct answers bunched on one letter across a bank, so always picking it would score well. |
| Answer-letter cycles | Correct answers that follow a repeating pattern (A, B, C, D, A, B…) even when the totals look even. |
The same checker also reports issues that need a person to judge rather than blocking outright, such as a sum it cannot evaluate, a missing figure, or a correct answer that is noticeably longer than the other options.
Answer-pattern checks
A good question should only be answerable by knowing the subject. We scan every bank for patterns that let someone guess the right answer without reading it properly:
- Length: the correct answer being the longest option.
- Commas: the correct answer being the only option with a list or qualifying clause.
- Negation: wrong answers being the ones that start with "Not", "No" or "Never".
- Absolute words: wrong answers being the ones that say "always", "never", "only" or "all".
We aim for balance, not zero. If every "always" were removed from the wrong answers, an "always" would start to mark the right one, so the target is the mix you would expect by chance. Where a pattern shows up, we rewrite the wrong answers to be as careful and plausible as the right one, rather than stripping detail out.
Answer-position balancing
Correct answers are spread evenly across A, B, C and D in each bank, using a fixed shuffle so the order is neither lopsided nor predictable. Options that only make sense in one place, such as "All of the above", stay where they are, and numeric answers stay in ascending order.
Subject-accuracy reviews
Automated checks catch patterns, not wrong facts. A confidently stated error passes every one of them, so banks also go through review passes that read each question against its source:
- August 2026, safety-critical courses: 16 courses including first aid, electrical testing and wiring regulations, gas safety, construction site safety, SIA licensing and driver CPC. Every finding for the courses that needed changes was fixed and checked again.
- August 2026, curriculum and school courses: about 5,100 questions across Functional Skills, A-level, GCSE, KS1 to KS3, 11+, ESOL and the Kids courses, checked against the national curriculum and the published specifications. After this cycle every bank then in the catalogue had had a subject-accuracy review.
- September 2026, Premium courses: every Premium bank compared with the awarding body's current exam outline and every question read. New and rewritten questions were answered blind by a separate reviewer, who did not see the marked answer, before they were accepted.
Courses added since then are reviewed the same way before they launch.
These reviews were carried out with AI reviewers working from primary sources, with a second, independent pass on anything that changed. Where a question needs a practising professional's judgement, we mark it for specialist review rather than guess.
Keeping content current
Exams change: new syllabus versions, retirement dates and rule changes. When we know an exam is changing, the course page carries a currency note saying which version the practice follows and what is due to change. 81 courses carry one at present. We check those dates against the awarding body, not training-provider blogs.
Each course page shows a "last reviewed" date: the date its question bank was last changed. Blog posts show the date they were last updated.
Corrections
If you think a question, answer or explanation is wrong, email support@passnova.co.uk. It helps to include the course, the question text and what you think the right answer is, with a source if you have one.
The flag icon in practice marks a question for your own revision. It does not send us a report, so please use email for errors.
We check every report against the official source. If the question is wrong, we fix it in the bank and check the rest of the catalogue for the same mistake. The fix goes live with the next release, and the course's "last reviewed" date moves with it.
Who is responsible
PassNova is run by JDS Vanguard Holdings Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 16392512. See the About page for our registered office and contact details.