Our Examiners

NEBOSH Examiners are highly qualified and experienced professionals. We have a rigorous recruitment process and all Examiners meet mandatory criteria that includes:

  • Holding a qualification in occupational health and safety
  • Being a Chartered Member of IOSH or CertIOSH working towards Chartered membership
  • Real life health and safety experience

Many of our Examiners have additional assessment or marking experience but all of them will undertake training before they are permitted to mark NEBOSH examinations.

Examiner training

All of our Examiners – whether marking an open book examination or not – undergo:

  • Training
  • A training exercise where they mark a practice answer paper and are assessed on their marking
  • For their first examination new Examiners:
    • Are allocated fewer answer papers
    • Are quality assured by NEBOSH
  • All Examiners are also quality assured:
    • Annually
    • On marking a new qualification; and
    • In the event of a successful Enquiry About Results

Digital assessments

The new NEBOSH General Certificate – launched in 2019 – introduced a new practical assessment and a new format for the examination question paper, replacing ‘command words’ with Plain English. This Plain English approach was also adopted for the digital assessments, so our Examiners were already well prepared – the only difference was that they would be marking through the online assessment platform rather than on an answer paper that was posted to them.

Nevertheless, we wanted our Examiners to be prepared for the new format so we:

  • Used existing Examiners who were already trained on and familiar with the NEBOSH qualifications and mark schemes
  • Issued a sample question paper and sample answers
  • Provided training on the online assessment platform

What our Examiners say

“I believe NEBOSH has done an excellent job of maintaining the exam’s strength and prestige. The pre-COVID invigilated exam and open book examination seem very much on par with each other.”

Shurene Bishop Simon
NEBOSH Examiner and Health & Safety Manager and Biological Safety Officer for Cancer Research UK

“The scenario style questions definitely promote the candidates understanding and evaluation. You cannot get through the exam ‘parrot fashion’ and that is exactly what is needed from a health and safety professional.

“In my opinion, businesses don't need someone spouting the law, they need somebody to review arrangements for that specific situation, analyse and recommend. It’s definitely a positive change, ensuring safety professional's competence in real life industry.”

Rebecca Docker 
NEBOSH Examiner and Managing Director RD Safety Solutions