Tools
How many can you get wrong
Every jurisdiction sets its own margin, and they are nothing like each other. Queensland allows three wrong answers in the whole assessment. Part one in South Australia allows none at all. Put a practice score in and see whether it would have held up.
Pick the jurisdiction you are sitting in, put the score from a practice run into each section, and the panel underneath says whether that run would have cleared the real mark. It is arithmetic against a published pass mark, not a prediction of anything.
- What it needs from you
- A jurisdiction, and how many you got right in each section of a practice run.
- What it gives back
- Pass or fail against the real mark, the margin each section allows, and how many wrong answers you made against it.
- Where the marks come from
- The pass mark published by each agency. The Victorian figure is the one place arithmetic is done, and the panel says so on the spot.
- What it will not do
- Score a Tasmanian or Northern Territory run. Neither has a pass mark we have verified, so the tool refuses rather than using a number from somewhere else.
The test you are sitting
NSW Driver Knowledge Test. Two sections, and you have to pass both. Three wrong answers are allowed in the first and one in the second.
That would have passed
That is a pass, on the exact mark, with nothing spare. One more wrong answer and it is a fail.
- General knowledge
- 13 of 15, needs 12
- 3 wrong answers allowed, you made 2.
- Road safety
- 29 of 30, needs 29
- 1 wrong answers allowed, you made 1.
Every margin, drawn to scale
The bar is the whole test. The filled part is what you have to get right, and the pale part is the entire room for error.
How much room each test gives you
Two sections in one jurisdiction can have completely different margins, which is why the New South Wales test is drawn as two bars rather than one.
- NSW: General knowledge3 wrong allowed12 of 15 correct to pass.
- NSW: Road safety1 wrong allowed29 of 30 correct to pass.
- VIC: VIC learner permit knowledge test7 wrong allowed25 of 32 correct to pass. The number needed is worked out from a published percentage rather than published as a count.
- QLD: QLD PrepL3 wrong allowed27 of 30 correct to pass.
- WA: WA theory test6 wrong allowed24 of 30 correct to pass.
- SA: Part one, give way rules0 wrong allowed8 of 8 correct to pass.
- SA: Part two, general road rules10 wrong allowed32 of 42 correct to pass.
- ACT: ACT knowledge test4 wrong allowed31 of 35 correct to pass.
The filled part of each bar is the share you have to get right. The pale part is the whole margin for error.
Question counts and pass marks as published by each agency, reviewed on the date at the top of this page. Tasmania and the Northern Territory have no verified mark and therefore no bar.
The margin in every jurisdiction
The number that matters is not the pass mark. It is how many wrong answers it leaves you.
| Where | Test | Questions | To pass | Wrong answers allowed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New South Wales | General knowledge | 15 | 12 | 3 |
| New South Wales | Road safety | 30 | 29 | 1 |
| Victoria | VIC learner permit knowledge test | 32 | 25, worked out from a published percentage | 7 |
| Queensland | QLD PrepL | 30 | 27 | 3 |
| Western Australia | WA theory test | 30 | 24 | 6 |
| South Australia | Part one, give way rules | 8 | 8 | 0 |
| South Australia | Part two, general road rules | 42 | 32 | 10 |
| Tasmania | TAS knowledge test | Not published here | Not published here | Not published here |
| Northern Territory | NT DriveSafe NT knowledge test | Not published here | Not published here | Not published here |
| Australian Capital Territory | ACT knowledge test | 35 | 31 | 4 |
What the margins tell you to practise
A wide margin and a narrow margin are different tests, and they reward different preparation.
Western Australia allows six wrong answers out of 30, which is the widest margin published anywhere in the country. You can walk in with a few soft spots and still pass. Queensland allows three out of 30, and the assessment sits at the end of a course people have already spent four to six hours on, which is why so many stall on the last step rather than the first.
New South Wales and South Australia are the two that punish a single topic. The New South Wales road safety section allows one wrong answer out of 30, so one shaky give way rule is the whole sitting. South Australian part one is eight give way questions with no margin at all: eight questions, eight correct answers, and the intersection diagrams are the reason people repeat it.
If you are practising against a narrow margin, drilling your worst topic is worth more than another full sitting. If the margin is wide, full sittings under time are the better use of an evening.
Two we will not calculate
Tasmania and the Northern Territory have no question count and no pass mark that we have been able to verify against Service Tasmania or the Northern Territory Government. Third party sites carry numbers for both. One widely copied figure puts the Northern Territory at 26 out of 30. We could not confirm it, so we do not repeat it, and the tool refuses to score against it.
The Victorian figure is the one place we do arithmetic. VicRoads publishes the pass mark as 78 percent of 32 questions, which is 24.96, so 25 correct is the first whole number that clears it. The 25 is ours. The 78 percent is theirs.
Knowing the margin is not the same as having it. Practise against the real New South Wales question bank or your own jurisdiction's original practice questions, then come back and put the score in here.
The pages these figures come from
Every figure above is read off one of these pages, where it sits next to the agency that published it and the date it was checked.