Owning a question bank and using a question bank well are two completely different things. Plenty of trainees pay for access, grind through hundreds of questions on autopilot and wonder why their mock scores barely move.
The difference between slow progress and fast progress usually comes down to how you practise, not how much.
Know what you are practising against
The Common Registration Assessment has a specific structure. Part 1 is 40 calculations in 2 hours. Part 2 is 120 selected-response questions in 2.5 hours — 90 Single Best Answer questions (SBAs) and 15 Extended Matching Question (EMQ) sets with two questions each.
The framework document on the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) website breaks the content into topic areas with clear weightings. High-weighted areas carry 60–70 percent of the assessment. Medium-weighted areas carry 25–35 percent. Low-weighted areas carry up to 10 percent.
Your question bank sessions should reflect those proportions. If you are spending equal time on every topic regardless of weighting, you are not being efficient.
A daily structure that works
Random question-grinding tends to produce random results. A basic daily structure keeps your practice focused.
Morning block — 20 to 30 minutes of calculations. Do a timed set of 5 to 10 calculation questions. Focus on setup method, unit handling and checking your answer before moving on. Review every error immediately.
Main session — 40 to 60 minutes of Single Best Answer (SBA) or EMQ practice. Pick a specific topic area from the framework. Work through 20 to 30 questions on that topic under light time pressure. After finishing, review every question you got wrong and every question you were unsure about, even if you got it right.
End of day — 10 minutes on your error log. Write down what you got wrong and why. Not the full question, just the principle you missed. This takes two minutes per error and saves hours of repeated mistakes later.
How to review answers properly
The review step is where the real improvement happens, and it is where most people cut corners.
For a calculation you got wrong, trace back through your working. Was it a setup error, a unit conversion mistake, an arithmetic slip or a misread of the question? Each type of error has a different fix. Lumping them all together as "got it wrong" teaches you nothing.
For an SBA you got wrong, read the explanation fully. Then ask yourself: did I not know this, or did I know it but pick the wrong option anyway? If you did not know it, that is a knowledge gap to fill. If you knew it but still picked wrong, that is a question-reading problem — and it needs a different kind of practice.
For an EMQ you got wrong, check whether you matched the stem to the wrong option because of a genuine misunderstanding or because you rushed. Extended Matching Questions (EMQs) reward careful reading of the stem before scanning the option list.
Track your weak areas simply
You do not need a complicated spreadsheet. A running list works fine.
Each time you get a question wrong, note the topic area from the framework. After a week, tally the list. The topics with the most tallies are your priority areas for the following week.
This feedback loop — practise, log errors, adjust focus — is the engine behind fast improvement. Without it, you are just answering questions and hoping for the best.
Use timed sets to build exam pace
Untimed practice is fine when you are learning a new topic. But once you have covered the material, you need to start practising under time pressure.
For Part 1, aim for roughly 3 minutes per calculation. For Part 2, aim for about 75 seconds per question. These are the real time constraints you will face.
Set a timer when you do a set. If you consistently run over, that tells you something specific — either you are spending too long reading questions, or your method for certain question types is too slow. Both are fixable with targeted practice.
When to do full mock papers
Start doing full-length mocks when you are roughly 4 to 6 weeks out from the assessment. Before that, topic-focused sets are more useful because they let you isolate and fix specific weak areas.
A full mock tells you something different — it tells you whether your pacing holds up across a whole paper, whether fatigue affects your accuracy and whether you can handle the switch between question types.
After a mock, do not just look at the score. Go through every wrong answer using the same review process. A mock without a proper review is half-wasted.
Reference practice matters too
During the assessment, British National Formulary (BNF) extracts and SmPCs are available on-screen through the platform. You cannot bring your own paper copies.
If your question bank includes questions that require you to look something up in the BNF or a Summary of Product Characteristics (SmPC), practise doing that digitally. Speed at navigating those references under pressure is a skill, and it is one that only improves with repetition.
Quick FAQs
- How many questions should I do per day? Enough to get meaningful practice without burning out. For most trainees, 30 to 50 questions per day — including a calculation set — is a sustainable range during the main revision period.
- Should I repeat questions I have already done? Yes, but not immediately. If you got a question wrong, revisit it after a few days to check whether the correction stuck. If you got it right easily, there is no need to repeat it.
- What if my scores plateau? A plateau usually means you are practising the same way without fixing underlying gaps. Check your error log. If the same topics keep appearing, you need to change how you are studying those topics, not just do more questions on them.
- Is one question bank enough? For most people, yes. Depth of use matters more than variety of sources. One well-used question bank beats three barely-touched ones.