Essential food hygiene certificate examination: examination papers reviewed

One thousand papers for the Essential Food Hygiene examination, chosen consecutively from those being processed in RSH House on 6-7 April 1994, were reviewed. The purpose of the review was to assess the impact of the redesigned course and the new examination papers which were introduced from 1 January 1994. The pass rate for the sample was 96.7% which was somewhat lower than the pass rate of 99.2% for the whole of 1993 when the previous examination papers were in use. Out of 1000 papers 33 were failures. Eighteen candidates had obtained the 70% pass mark yet still failed because one of the two questions on temperature control had been answered incorrectly. The requirement to answer both those questions correctly in order to obtain a certificate was introduced with the new examination papers and marked a major change. The conclusion from this snapshot study was that the majority of Tutors and the candidates from their courses had achieved a high degree of examination success. In particular, Tutors had secured a major objective by ensuring that trainees had a clear understanding of the concepts of temperature control. Only a minority were having difficulty. Of the 33 individuals who failed, 18 came from just four of the 108 courses.