2Reasoning
Deductive reasoning practice
Three courses short-list with a deductive reasoning test. Practise with our own items in the five styles Lancaster describes.
Your test
Lancaster, 8 to 22 February 2027
Source: Lancaster, checked .
Manchester, February or March 2027 on the Clearing House list; Lancaster's own page gives 8 to 22 February 2027 for its own applicants
Sources: Clearing House test list, checked ; Lancaster’s short-listing page, checked ; Manchester’s course page, checked .
Sheffield, February or March 2027
Source: Sheffield, checked .
A sample item
The training quiz
After the safeguarding refresher, everyone took the same short quiz. No two scores were the same.
- 1Exactly two people come between Callum and Yusuf.
- 2Hana is exactly two places above Callum.
- 3Callum scored higher than Mairi.
Put them in order from 1st (highest score) to last (lowest).
Hana, Callum, Yusuf, Grace, Mairi.
These are our own items, not SHL’s test or any course’s.
About this practice
Is this practice the same as SHL’s test?
No. All the items are written for this site; none comes from a real test, a practice test or anyone’s memory of one. We have no link with SHL or any course. Lancaster says even SHL’s public practice test is not the live one: “this test is not the same as the deductive test available on their candidate practise site”.
Try SHL’s own practice tests as well: the courses point applicants to its Deductive Reasoning Test (Mobile-Enabled, Interactive). SHL’s page carries no date; checked 24 September 2026.
Will practising here improve my score?
No one can promise that. Practice makes the five styles and the time pressure familiar before the day. The live test adapts to your answers; this practice does not.
Which courses use it?
The DClinPsy deductive reasoning test is an online test that Lancaster, Sheffield and Manchester use to short-list for interview for 2027 entry. If you applied to more than one of them, you sit the test once and the result goes to each.
Only Lancaster has published test days.
Sources: Lancaster, checked ; Clearing House test list, checked ; Manchester’s course page, checked ; Sheffield, checked .
Is there a verbal, numerical or abstract reasoning test?
None of the 30 courses publishes one for 2027 entry. The published reasoning test is the deductive one.
What is the test like?
Lancaster publishes “a standard time limit of 18 minutes for the deductive test which has 12 items”, about 30 minutes in all with the instructions. Sheffield’s page gives the same 12 items in 18 minutes.
- Extra time
- For candidates who need it, “usually 20%”.
- Adaptive
- Yes: “the questions get harder if you keep getting them correct”, and “everyone will find it hard to finish in the time provided”.
- What you may use
- Notes and a calculator. Lancaster says: “This is not a maths or English test - it looks at how you reason.” The items here need you to read times and count, and nothing more.
- Before you start
- Take the practice questions inside the live test first.
- Five styles
- Items use “common workplace tasks”, in five styles: grouping, ranking, comparing schedules, scheduling tasks and calendar.
Source: Lancaster, checked .
What each style asks, and the levels
There are 20 practice items in each style.
- Grouping. Put people into rooms, cars or teams so that every requirement is met.
- Ranking. Work out an order from statements about who came above whom.
- Comparing schedules. Read several calendars and find the one time a meeting can go.
- Scheduling tasks. Fit tasks of different lengths into your free slots, in an order that works.
- Calendar. Find the day, or every day, that meets a list of restrictions.
Each item has a level from 1 to 3, our own measure of how much work it takes.
- Level 1. A short chain of single-clue steps.
- Level 2. A longer chain, or more to hold in mind at once.
- Level 3. Needs you to suppose something and show it cannot work, or to juggle many requirements.