None of us is good enough to be British

One of the most important pillars of British life is the Pub Quiz. It’s thus fitting that people who wish to become permanent residents or citizens of the United Kingdom are obliged to pass a tricky pub quiz before being allowed to settle here permanently.

If you’re interested in pitting your wits against the test, you can take the Official Practice Citizenship Test online. (Note the tragic irony of the misspelled page title while you’re there.)

But be warned. The pass mark is high, and the questions are tricky. Some of the questions are historical trivia irrelevant to life in the UK:

In which year did married women get the right to divorce their husband?

  • 1837
  • 1857
  • 1875
  • 1882

Some are barely-disguised government propaganda:

Adults who have been unemployed for six months are usually required to join New Deal if they wish to continue receiving benefit.

  • True
  • False

Others are specific to the point of absurdity:

The number of children and young people up to the age of 19 in the UK is

  • 13 million
  • 14 million
  • 15 million
  • 16 million

But what’s really amusing is the recent activity on Twitter. Lots of British citizens have been taking the practice test.

A few passed. Most failed.

It turns out that almost no one who is already British would be allowed to become British. The test doesn’t appear to intersect either with what British people think their country is, nor with what they think that prospective citizens ought to know. So, what is the point of this test? Rote memorisation skills?

The idea of requiring potential permanent residents and citizens to know about the country may not be unreasonable of itself, though it has more than a whiff of populist pandering about it. However, the way that the Citizenship Test has been implemented deserves our ridicule and contempt.

I also posted a problem on Get Satisfaction.

2009-07-06 13:25 UTC. Comments: 6.

Comments

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  1. Musashi

    Wrote at 2009-07-06 16:35 UTC using Firefox 3.5 on Mac OS X:

    You have failed the practice citizenship test.

    Questions answered correctly: 12 out of 24 (50%)

    Time taken: 07 minutes 56 seconds
    —
    What a humongous waste of public time and money! I pity the poor suckers that need to take such a test for citizenship.

  2. Mark

    Wrote at 2009-07-06 20:28 UTC using Firefox 3.0.11 on Linux:

    I am appalled, I join the masses I think with a score of 10/24.

    My wife being foreign will at some point need to take this stupid test I guess, assuming a wife of a citizen still has to?

    The test will not prove anything other than making sure she can study ridiculous question/answers…wouldn’t it be better to restrict citizenship based on a person’s existing education…?

  3. Neil Trodden

    Wrote at 2009-07-06 22:57 UTC using Mozilla 1.9.1b4pre on Linux:

    You will love this. They require that your English is “ESOL Entry 3 or above” and if it is not, they insist you attend a combined citizenship course AND English course.

    This is my favourite part:

    “The test is offered routinely in English. However, if you are taking the test in a centre based in Wales you may request to take a test in the Welsh language, or if taking the test in Scotland you may request to take the test in Scottish Gaelic. You can get further details from your test centre.”

    WTF?

  4. Ian

    Wrote at 2009-07-08 11:16 UTC using Firefox 3.0.11 on Windows XP:

    There are also the ones where you can see what answer they want, even if it’s not actually the correct one.

    I’m not going to find it again (that site is too Flashy for me) but there’s one which wants you to say that the government is the largest party in the House of Commons. Most of the time, yes. But not necessarily.

    Still it beats the job aptitude test that wanted me to say that light bulbs’ brightness is measured in ‘watts’.

    (Using WINE on Ubuntu to run Firefox and interested in seeing what this reckons it is.)

  5. neil

    Wrote at 2009-07-10 08:46 UTC using Chrome 2.0.172.33 on Windows XP:

    Failed !18/24 stupid. Waste of time and government money! I agree that foreigners wanting to take up citizenship in the UK must have some apprechiation of our history, culture and way of life, but this is not the way. Strikes me this test is passed by learning stupid facts, it will add nothing to the real knowledge of an individual who wants to live and contribute to the UK society.

  6. Mark Wilson

    Wrote at 2009-07-17 14:32 UTC using Internet Explorer 8.0 on Windows 7:

    Perhaps if British education and news coverage was a little better (has anyone watched the News at Ten recently… it’s getting more like Newsround every day?) us Brits might even know the answers…

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