FAQs on the STP Final Year Assessment for trainees

The STP Final Year Assessment is an essential part of your programme. You need to pass the assessment to complete the programme. You need to be available for all of the working days within the assessment sitting window. You will be assigned a specific day and time to attend your assessment within this window.

You will be assessed with other trainees in your specialty. Multiple trainees will complete the same circuit of stations at the same time, each starting at a different point in the circuit and moving sequentially between stations. We cannot accommodate requests for your assessment to be on a specific date, regardless of when you let us know.

You can find more information on mitigating circumstances which may impact your attendance at the assessment in the STP Final Year Assessment regulations as well as what will happen if you don’t attend the assessment.

Your assessment date and time will be on a working day within the assessment sitting window dates listed. We will aim to give you as much notice as possible of your assessment date and time. We cannot tell you when we will be able to share this with you at the moment. When we do have this information available, we will get in touch with you using your preferred email address, so please make sure you notify us if this changes.

In exceptional circumstances, your assessment time and date may need to be rescheduled within the assessment sitting window. If this happens, you will still be expected to be available to attend your assessment. We strongly recommend you do not book any events which cannot be changed within the assessment sitting window.

You can find more information about what will happen if you don’t attend the assessment and about mitigating circumstances which may impact your attendance at the assessment in the STP Final Year Assessment regulations.

The STP Final Year Assessment is an essential part of your programme. You cannot defer your assessment. The STP Final Year Assessment regulations provide more information if you experience circumstances that impact your ability to complete the assessment (mitigating circumstances) or your training (exceptional extenuating circumstances).

For trainees following the normal timelines for the programme who will sit in the summer of their final year, the STP Final Year Assessment is scheduled as near to the end of the programme as is practically possible. Successful completion of the assessment is required to complete the programme, which for most trainees will be in September. Scheduling the assessment in July ensures that we have enough time to provide the result of your assessment to you before you complete the programme. If you are unsuccessful in the STP Final Year Assessment this also gives you some time to review and plan for a resit while you are still on the programme.

The assessment will be delivered online, using a purpose-built online assessment platform. The platform has already been used extensively for assessment of healthcare professionals in NHS Trusts and is therefore accessible through most Trust IT systems. Before the assessment we’ll provide you with thorough details about the platform and support you to log in, test your system and use the platform.

You don’t need to have completed all of your work-based training or your MSc before you sit the assessment. Scenarios presented to you in the assessment will sample the curriculum so you should be prepared to respond to scenarios on any area from within your curriculum.

You don’t need to submit anything in advance of the assessment. Scenarios presented to you in the assessment will sample the curriculum so you should be prepared to respond to scenarios on any area in your curriculum.

We will provide more information so that you can get a feel for how the assessment will work and see the platform in action before you sit your assessment. We will add this information to the website before the first sitting of the assessment in July 2025 to allow you time to prepare. Completing your work-based assessments will help you to prepare for the STP Final Year Assessment. Your work-based assessments will help you develop the skills and applied knowledge of your practice needed for the assessment and also provide experience of completing ‘in-person’ assessments where you are required to respond to scenarios and talk through your rationale for your actions.

You can request a reasonable adjustment to the assessment to support you. There is more information on reasonable adjustments in the STP Final Year Assessment regulations. Please take note of the timelines for application for reasonable adjustments to make sure your request can be accommodated.

Each section of the assessment is made up of 2 parts: pre-reading and the station. You’ll repeat these 2 parts multiple times as you complete the circuit.

In the pre-reading part, you’ll be asked to read a brief scenario alongside 1 or 2 questions about the scenario that you will respond to. This pre-reading time allows you to familiarise yourself with the scenario and to start to prepare your response. The pre-reading will be presented on screen and there will be no one else present for this part of the assessment. You will also have access to the pre-reading and the questions throughout the station. The time you have remaining in pre-reading will be clearly displayed on-screen

When you’ve completed your allocated time for pre-reading, you’ll be automatically moved into the station. Your assessor will be present with you in the station and you’ll be able to see each other on screen. This is the part of the assessment where you’ll provide your response to the questions asked about the scenario. You’ll be expected to remain professional in your interaction with the assessor but you will not be marked on your presentation style. The stations have been designed to include more time than we expect most people to need to provide their response. The time you have remaining in the station will be clearly displayed on-screen at all times. There is no opportunity to revisit a question asked about a scenario once you have left the station.

In the assessment you will be asked to describe what you would do in typical scenarios that you may face as a newly-registered Clinical Scientist. The focus of the assessment is on how you would behave in that scenario and what you would do to manage it, to ensure you are safe, professional and ready to practise. You will be provided with all the information you need to provide a response to the scenario, in the pre-reading you are shown immediately before each ‘station’. It will be up to you to assess, analyse and apply this information to describe how you would manage the situation. The assessment does not simply focus on your recall of knowledge so having additional information available to you in the assessment may not be helpful to you.

We are continuing our preparation and planning to deliver the assessment in July 2025 and will confirm if you can have additional information available to you during the assessment.

It may be possible to take notes or write things down in the assessment.  We are continuing our preparation and planning to deliver the assessment in July 2025 and will confirm if you can take notes as soon as we can.

Once you have logged into the platform we will be using to deliver the assessment, you do not have to do anything to move from one station to another. The platform will provide you with the right pre-reading at the right time and move you into the right station with the assessor. You cannot get lost. We will provide more information so that you can get a feel for how the assessment will work and see the platform in action before you sit your assessment. We will add this information to the website before the first sitting of the assessment in July 2025 to allow you time to prepare.

As outlined in the STP Final Year Assessment regulations, we will endeavour to ensure assessors are independent and you are not assessed by your current or past Training Officer(s). For smaller specialties in particular, it may be the case that you will be assessed by someone from your specialty community that you already know, or someone who has been involved in your work-based training or MSc.

You can request a reasonable adjustment to the assessment to support you. There is more information on reasonable adjustments in the STP Final Year Assessment regulations. Please take note of the timelines for application for reasonable adjustment to make sure your request can be accommodated.

Sufficient time for ALL trainees to complete the pre-reading and to provide a response to the scenarios has been built into the time allowed. The stations have been designed to include more time than we expect most people to need to provide their response. We expect it to be very rare that a reasonable adjustment involving additional time will be necessary.

Prior to each assessment station you will need to read the scenario, and the questions presented to you onscreen during the pre-reading time. The pre-reading will be presented following best practices for language, colour, layout and font that will seek to make the content more accessible for everyone. You’ll have access to the pre-reading throughout the station if you want to revisit the information.

In the station you need to provide a verbal response to the assessor about the questions about the scenarios. You will need to provide your response before you leave the station. There will be no opportunity to revisit a station.

How long you have in each part of the assessment will be presented to you on screen. You will be able to see a timer which counts down to the end of each part of the station telling you how long you have left in that part of the assessment.

Minimal information will be provided to you verbally by the assessor. The scenarios and question are both available to you in written format throughout the station. No additional information or questions on the scenario are provided verbally. Your assessors may provide you with limited verbal cues in the station, for example, to inform you that you are approaching the end of your time in the station. This information will also be available on screen.

You will need to be visible on screen using your webcam during the assessment. You will also be able to see your assessor on screen in each station. You’ll be expected to act professionally on screen, but your presentation style won’t be marked, just the response you provide.

We have designed the assessment to be as inclusive as possible and to minimise the need for reasonable adjustments. You can apply for a reasonable adjustment. The School’s Reasonable Adjustments Policy sets out the process and full scope of reasons for requesting a reasonable adjustment. Applications for a reasonable adjustment must be made within the timelines outlined by the policy to be considered.

We have outlined the indicative timelines for receiving your results for each sitting of the assessment. We will endeavour to get your results to you as soon as possible while making sure due process is followed. We will send your results to your preferred email address, so please make sure you notify us if this changes.

If you are not successful at your 1st attempt, you will have an opportunity to resit the assessment. The regulations which guide resit opportunities are available in the STP Final Year Assessment regulations. If you need to resit, your programme is not extended, and your resit will be completed ‘off programme’. Your programme completion date will remain the same and you will need to complete all other elements of the programme as expected. Additional funding is not available for trainees who need to resit the assessment.

All attempts at the assessment are completed in the same format. Resit opportunities follow the same format as the 1st sit assessment. The regulations which guide resit opportunities are available in the STP Final Year Assessment regulations.