What "Cannot Say" really means in the verbal test
Cannot Say does not mean "not sure" or "not stated". It means the passage alone cannot settle it, the distinction that costs the most marks.
Most people who sit the Civil Service Verbal Test can tell true from false without much difficulty. The marks disappear somewhere else, on the statements that should be marked “cannot say”, where a plausible-sounding answer turns out to be wrong for a reason that has nothing to do with reading comprehension.
The problem is not that candidates cannot spot true and false. It is that they treat “cannot say” as a vague third bucket, something close to “I’m not sure” or “the passage doesn’t quite say this”. It means something narrower and stricter than either of those. This post sets out exactly what it means, where the mistake usually happens, and how to check your own answer before you commit to it.
What does “cannot say” actually mean in the verbal test?
“Cannot say” means the passage in front of you does not contain enough information to decide whether the statement is true or false, full stop. GOV.UK’s own guidance for the test states the mechanic plainly: for each statement, you must decide whether it is “true”, “false”, or you “cannot say”, based on the information given (Preparing for the Civil Service Verbal and Numerical tests). That phrase, based on the information given, is the whole rule. Nothing outside the passage counts: not general knowledge, not what seems sensible, not what you already know to be true about the world.
This matters because the test is not really measuring whether you can read for gist. It measures, in the same guidance’s own words, “the ability to identify relevant information and draw logical conclusions from written information”, one strand of the Ability element inside the wider Success Profiles framework used across Civil Service recruitment. Ability is defined officially as “the aptitude or potential to perform to the required standard”, and the Civil Service names the verbal reasoning test directly as one of the tools used to assess it (Success Profiles: Ability).
So “cannot say” is not a hedge. It is a precise verdict: the passage, taken alone, does not settle the question. If the passage does settle it, even when the fact it states feels debatable or you personally doubt it, the correct answer is true or false, not cannot say.
Why do candidates over-use “cannot say”?
The first failure mode is over-caution. Faced with a statement that feels slightly underspecified, many candidates retreat to “cannot say” as the safe option, the same way you might shrug in conversation rather than commit to an answer.
That instinct is understandable, and it is wrong far more often than it feels wrong. A statement can be phrased differently from the passage and still be settled by it. “The office opens earlier on Mondays” and “the office’s Monday opening hours are extended” can be the same claim in different words. If the passage supports one, it supports the other, and the answer is true or false, not cannot say.
The test itself is not timed. GOV.UK’s guidance for recruiters confirms the Verbal Test carries no clock, and the candidate-facing guidance adds that “tests are not timed, however most people take between 15 and 45 minutes to complete each one”, recommending you allow at least an hour (Selecting online tests; Preparing for the Civil Service Verbal and Numerical tests). So over-caution is not really a symptom of running out of time. It is a habit: treating any uncertainty at all as grounds for cannot say, instead of going back to the passage and checking, sentence by sentence, whether it actually settles the statement.
Why do candidates under-use “cannot say”?
The second failure mode runs the other way. Candidates read a statement that sounds true, matches what they already know or believe, and mark it true without checking that the passage itself actually says it.
This is the outside-knowledge trap, and it is the more dangerous of the two because it feels like confidence rather than guessing. If a passage about a fictional department never mentions how long a process takes, and a statement claims the process is quick, marking it true because that seems realistic is exactly the error the test is built to catch. The passage is the entire universe of facts for the purpose of your answer. What is plainly true in real life, or true of the actual Civil Service, does not enter into it if the passage in front of you is silent on the point.
Both failure modes come from the same root: not treating the passage as a closed system. Over-caution refuses to use what the passage does say. Under-use imports what the passage does not say. The discipline that fixes both is the same, read the statement, then ask only what the passage in front of you proves, not what seems reasonable and not what feels underspecified.
What does the passage-only rule look like in practice?
An example makes the rule concrete. The passage, statements and verdicts below are written for this article. They are not from any real test, official or commercial, and nobody should treat them as practice questions for the actual assessment.
A regional processing centre handles three types of benefit claims: housing, disability and jobseeker support. Each caseworker is assigned to one claim type for a full quarter before rotating to a different one. If a caseworker is away, their open cases are reassigned to a colleague who works the same claim type, and that colleague holds both caseloads until the original caseworker returns. New caseworkers complete a two week induction before they are given their own cases.
Statement 1: A caseworker’s absence means their cases go to a colleague handling a different claim type
Verdict: false. The passage states the opposite directly, that cases go to a colleague “who works the same claim type”. This is a straight contradiction, not a judgement call, so cannot say does not apply.
Statement 2: Caseworkers work on more than one claim type across the course of a year
Verdict: true. The passage says each caseworker rotates after “a full quarter”, which is three months. Four quarters make a year, so the rotation happens more than once in twelve months. This uses the ordinary meaning of a word already in the passage. It is not outside knowledge, because nothing beyond what “quarter” means was needed to reach it.
Statement 3: New caseworkers are paid less during their two week induction
Verdict: cannot say. The passage says nothing about pay at any point. The statement might be true of some organisation somewhere, and induction periods are sometimes paid differently in real workplaces, but that is exactly the kind of outside knowledge the passage does not license. Nothing here proves or disproves it.
How is the Civil Service Verbal Test actually structured?
The test presents a series of short passages, each followed by statements to judge as true, false or cannot say. GOV.UK’s guidance describes what the test measures without publishing a fixed item count, and that appears to be deliberate: the tests are adaptive, so “if you get a question right the next question may become harder, and if you get a question wrong the next question may become easier”, which means “the tests can vary in length” between candidates (Preparing for the Civil Service Verbal and Numerical tests). A source that quotes you a fixed number of questions is describing its own practice product, not the official test.
What is confirmed: the test carries no time limit, though most people take between 15 and 45 minutes and the guidance recommends allowing at least an hour for it (Preparing for the Civil Service Verbal and Numerical tests). A handful of unscored trial items may also appear alongside the questions that count, used only to calibrate future versions of the test, and these are not distinguishable from the ones that are marked. The Verbal Test sits within Group A of the Civil Service’s test groupings and is used across every standard grade banding, from AA/AO up to Grade 6, 7 and SCS 1 (Selecting online tests).
PublicServicePathway is independent of the Civil Service and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the UK Government or Civil Service. The mechanics described here are drawn from GOV.UK’s own published guidance, linked throughout, rather than from us.
What happens to your score once you have taken the test?
Your result is reported as a percentile against other candidates who sat the same test, so a score of 44 means you did better than 44 percent of that comparison group. Meeting the minimum standard for the job level does not guarantee you move forward: recruiters set the exact pass mark after the closing date and can raise it once they see the full field of scores (Civil Service online tests).
If you clear the standard, the result is banked. For the Verbal and Numerical tests specifically, a passing score is reused for six months across any vacancy in the same grade grouping, so an EO-level pass, for instance, also covers HEO and SEO vacancies you apply for while it remains valid, unless a new benchmark is applied in the meantime (Preparing for the Civil Service Verbal and Numerical tests). That is a real reason to take the cannot say distinction seriously the first time round: get it right and you may not sit this particular test again for months.
If you do not clear the standard, you are told, and you can retake the test in a future application. What that actually involves, and what your options are if a score falls short, is covered separately in what happens if your score does not clear the bar.
FAQ
Does “cannot say” mean the statement is probably false? No. It means the passage does not contain enough to prove the statement true or false either way. A statement marked cannot say could easily be true in reality; the passage simply does not say so.
What if I already know the answer from outside knowledge? It does not matter for this test. You are marking whether the passage proves the statement, not whether the statement happens to be correct in general. Set aside what you know and work only from what is written in front of you.
Is “cannot say” a safe default when I am not sure? No. Treating cannot say as a fallback for any uncertainty is one of the two main ways candidates lose marks. Go back to the specific sentence in the passage that bears on the statement before deciding, rather than defaulting to caution.
Where can I find the exact number of questions and the time I will get? GOV.UK’s guidance does not publish a fixed item count, because the test adapts to your answers and can vary in length between candidates. Your invitation email and the practice test linked from your Civil Service Jobs account describe what to expect for your own sitting.
Build the habit before it counts
Understanding the rule is only half of it. Spotting it under pressure, in the middle of an unfamiliar passage, takes practice against real material rather than a description of a rule. Work through the verbal reasoning practice sets for this test and the others named in a typical advert, and build the habit before it counts.