What happens if you fail the Australian citizenship test

The test is marked by computer, so you find out immediately rather than waiting for a letter. A departmental officer will let you know the outcome before you leave.

If you did not pass, you will be told what happens next and how your next appointment will be arranged. Ask any questions you have while you are still there - the officer in front of you is a far better source than anything you will read online afterwards, including this page.

The rest of your appointment still counts. The identity checks and the interview part of the appointment do not have to be repeated simply because the test result was not a pass.

Three things stay exactly as they were.

• Your citizenship application stays active. You do not withdraw it, and you do not start again.
• You do not reapply or pay the application fee again. Sitting the test again is covered by the fee you already paid.
• Your visa and your right to live in Australia are unchanged. Failing a test has no effect on your existing status.

The Department arranges another appointment for you. You do not have to find a slot yourself in the way you might book a driving test, and you are not charged for it.

Use the gap properly. Booking the next appointment quickly out of embarrassment, then turning up no better prepared, wastes the attempt. The questions are drawn from the same finite material either way - the only variable is how well you know it.

Before you sit again, get to the point where you are scoring 18 or more out of 20 consistently across different practice sets, with all five values questions right every time. See the pass mark explained for why aiming at exactly 15 is not enough.

What is clear is that repeated failure is not treated as unlimited. The Department can decide the outcome of your application, and a pattern of not passing - or not turning up to booked appointments without a good reason - can count against it.

What is not clear is a single fixed number. Different sources quote different limits, and the way an application is handled can depend on individual circumstances. We are not going to print a number here that we cannot stand behind.

Treat the next attempt as the one that counts, and the question of limits never becomes relevant to you.

Failing once tells you something useful, if you are honest about which part let you down.

• If you missed a values question, that is your first priority regardless of your overall score. There is no margin at all in Part 4.
• If your marks went in Part 3, government and the law is the least intuitive material and needs deliberate study rather than repeated quizzing.
• If you ran out of confidence rather than time, practise in full 20-question sets under the clock rather than in short bursts, so the format itself stops being a variable.
• If the English was the obstacle, read the material in your own language first to understand the concepts, then practise in English so the exam wording is familiar. The test itself is only available in English.