From Friday 14th October 2011 Police Oracle will start to publish a series of weekly articles to help OSPRE Part 1 Constable to Sergeant candidates keep on track in the build up to their promotion exam.

There are two important dates any candidate needs to consider, the first is December 1st 2011 which is the day all applications to take the exam must be submitted by. Any received after this date will be ruled out.

The other important date is the date of the exam itself. That is the 13th March 2012. After that date you can relax until the results come out and you can start to prepare for Part 2.

The articles will follow the study guide published in Police Oracle. This study guide has broken down the syllabus into bite sized chunks and even gives you a week off for Christmas so it is all positive. You will never study more than three chapters from Blackstone's in any one week. But that statement should give you an idea of how much work lies ahead.

I am not an advocate of studying just the things we think are likely to come up. The Exams Unit at Harrogate have been known to put in some really obscure questions into exams in the past, so my mantra has always been get a good understanding of the whole of Blackstone's, yes all four volumes.

I will try to steer you to areas that are good areas for question writers, but I won't say this or that is are likely to come up. I honestly don't know.

Top Tip

Get yourself a new set of Blackstone's before we start, and visit the NPIA web-site go to Examinations and Assessment, and then Part 1 to find the Rules and Syllabus document. Have a good read, there is no point in entering a competition is you don't know the rules and parameters before you buy a ticket.

Motivational Quote

Our starting off motivational quote comes from the great Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi, he said

The future depends on what we do in the present.

Now is the time to start to make that investment in your future by making a start with your studies.

See you this Friday.

Phil Waters

www.ospretraining.org

Message from Phil Waters - Executive Guidance

One of the last things I did before retiring from Surrey Police was to research the Forces performance in the promotion exam. What I found was that people who just read Blackstone's were much less likely to pass than those who used study programmes and crammer courses to support their learning.

I will be running last minute Crammer Courses at our fantastic new facility at Camberley in the two weekend's immediately before the exam. There is an early booking discount of 15 per cent for any places booked before the end of November 2011.

Visit the 'Contact Us' pages on www.executiveguidance.co.uk