Applications for Public Health Specialty Training open on 22 October 2026 and close four weeks later. The process hasn't changed much for 2027, but the competition has. Here's what each stage involves and how to prepare for it.
Recruitment to Public Health ST1 posts across the UK is run nationally by the Public Health National Recruitment Office (PHNRO), part of NHS England Midlands. One application covers England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Faculty of Public Health sets the standards for the specialty.
There are two entry routes: a medical route for doctors and a non-medical route for people from other relevant professional backgrounds. Once appointed, both follow the same five-year programme.
The process has three stages:
- Online application through Oriel
- Assessment centre (three computer-based tests at Pearson VUE)
- Selection centre (a virtual interview)
NHS England says the 2027 round is expected to run much like 2026. Keep an eye on the official recruitment pages though, because details can change right up to the day applications open.
Key dates for the 2027 round
Public Health recruits once a year. Miss the November deadline and you're waiting until autumn 2027 to try again.
- Applications open: Thursday 22 October 2026, 10am
- Applications close: Thursday 19 November 2026, 4pm
- Assessment centre bookings open: Expected by Wednesday 16 December 2026
- Assessment centre (Pearson VUE): Tuesday 5 and Wednesday 6 January 2027 only
- Assessment centre results: February 2027, date to be confirmed
- Selection centre (virtual interview): March 2027, dates to be confirmed
- First offers: By 5pm on Tuesday 6 April 2027
- Posts start: August 2027
Source: NHS England recruitment timelines. Offers go out in rank order, with the highest-scoring candidates getting their first preference until the posts run out.
Stage 1: the online application
You apply through Oriel and submit one national application. You indicate your first-choice training location at this point, but you don't rank the full list of programmes until later, and only if you're invited to the selection centre.
Eligibility is checked strictly against the 2027 person specification. Qualification grades, registration and experience requirements are applied to the letter, and ineligible applications are rejected before anyone reads your answers. So read the person specification before you start, not after. PHNRO won't advise on individual eligibility.
Doctors relying on a Certificate of Readiness to Enter Specialty Training (CREST) need a complete, certified certificate by the application deadline, using the new 2027 CREST form. Last year's version won't do.
The form itself asks about your qualifications, experience and evidence that you meet the person specification. You'll also be expected to show you understand current public health issues and the wider policy environment. Questions in recent rounds have included:
- How do your skills and attributes show you're a suitable candidate for a career in public health?
- What have you done recently to further your knowledge of public health, and what did you learn?
- Describe a time you found it hard to understand the concerns of a patient, service user or stakeholder. What impact did this have and what feedback did you get?
- Describe a time you had to communicate with people who had very different levels of understanding. How did you adapt, and how did you know it worked?
- Describe a recent experience of working in a multidisciplinary team in a challenging situation. What did you do and how did it help?
The evidence boxes are where applications are won or lost at this stage. Give yourself more than a weekend.
Stage 2: the assessment centre
If you clear the eligibility check, PHNRO invites you to sit three computer-based tests at a Pearson VUE test centre. For 2027 the tests run on 5 and 6 January only, with bookings expected to open by 16 December. Centres are spread across the UK and some overseas locations. Remote sitting is only considered in exceptional circumstances, case by case, so plan on travelling.
Bring acceptable ID. Check what Pearson VUE accepts before the day, because you won't be allowed to sit the tests without it. You'll get a few minutes to get used to the test environment before the clock starts.
The three tests are sat in a single sitting of around 190 minutes:
- Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal
- RANRA (Rust Advanced Numerical Reasoning Appraisal)
- A Public Health-specific Situational Judgement Test (SJT)
You need to reach the minimum standard on all three. Everyone who does is then ranked by score, and only the top-ranked candidates go through to interview. Fall below the bar on any one test and your application stops there.
Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal
Watson-Glaser tests how well you interpret information, weigh arguments and reach justified conclusions. In recent rounds it has been 40 questions in 30 minutes.
It covers five skills: drawing inferences from facts, recognising assumptions, deductive reasoning, logical interpretation and evaluating arguments. The questions feel nothing like an academic exam. Practice matters mostly because it teaches you the question patterns and gets you used to the time pressure. Prepare for Watson-Glaser here.
RANRA (Rust Advanced Numerical Reasoning Appraisal)
RANRA is not a maths test. It measures how you reason with numbers under time pressure, and in recent rounds has been 32 questions in 40 minutes.
There are two parts. In comparison of quantities you're given two quantities and asked which is larger, or whether you can tell. In sufficiency of information you're given two statements and a question, and asked whether the statements give you enough to answer it. Both reward spotting the relevant number quickly and using a shortcut rather than grinding through a calculation. Prepare for RANRA here.
Situational Judgement Test
The SJT assesses professional attributes rather than knowledge: integrity, communication, coping with pressure, team working. Recent rounds have used 53 questions in 100 minutes. Each scenario asks how a first-year Public Health Specialty Registrar should respond.
Ranking questions give you a scenario and a set of responses to order from most to least appropriate. Multiple-response questions give you a longer list of actions and ask you to pick the three that together form the best response. There's no negative marking, so answer everything.
The best preparation is the person specification itself, because the SJT is built around the behaviours it describes. Practise questions and then spend time on why the stronger answers are stronger. Prepare for the SJT here.
NHS England publishes its own example questions for each round and says that commercial preparation materials are optional and not endorsed by the recruitment team. Use the official examples as your baseline, whatever else you add.
Stage 3: the selection centre
The top-ranked candidates from the assessment centre are invited to a virtual selection centre in March 2027. It's a digital interview, held online, and your appointment can run up to 60 minutes once ID checks and the candidate briefing are included.
The interview itself is six questions of six minutes each, split across three stations with two questions per station. Two assessors score each station, so six people see you in total. That's the point of the format: several assessors, a balanced view, rather than one long conversation with a panel.
A few things catch people out. The assessors won't introduce themselves and you're not expected to introduce yourself either. They'll start the first question the moment the station opens. Their names appear on screen. When six minutes are up you're moved straight on to the next question, mid-sentence if necessary. None of this is rudeness. It's how they keep every candidate to the same clock.
Two of the six questions come with preparation time, and the material for those is sent to you the day before your interview. Read it properly. It's the only part of the process where you know the question in advance.
Each question is mapped to specific essential criteria in the person specification, and only the parts of your answer that address those criteria are scored. If you drift, the assessors will prompt you back. There's a minimum total score you need to reach to be considered appointable, and you need to clear both the assessment centre and selection centre thresholds before you can be offered a post.
Questions tend to be situational (what would you do if), experience-based (tell us about a time when) or about your understanding of current public health issues. Typical themes:
- Handling a scenario involving a service user, stakeholder or team
- Using data or evidence to inform a decision
- Showing leadership or managing conflict in a multidisciplinary team
- The main challenges facing public health in the UK and how to address them
Prepare more examples than you think you need and structure your answers using STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result). Then practise saying them out loud, to time. Six minutes is shorter than it sounds when you're nervous, and longer than it sounds when you've run out of things to say.
How competitive is it?
More competitive than it was two years ago, by a long way. In 2025 there were 95 posts and 2,288 eligible first-choice applications across the UK, an overall ratio of 24 applicants per post. In 2023 the ratio was 8 to 1.
Applications have more than doubled since 2023 while the number of posts has fallen by about a quarter. The offer rate in 2025 was 4% for doctors outside foundation training, 3% for foundation doctors and 5% for applicants from other professional backgrounds. Two years earlier those figures were 13%, 14% and 11%.
Ratios vary a lot by region. London had 587 first-choice applications for 18 posts in 2025, Scotland had 232 for a single post, and Wessex had 44 for 6. Where you put your first choice matters, though you can't apply to a region you wouldn't be willing to train in.
Figures for the 2026 round haven't been published yet. The full breakdown by region and year is on the competition ratios page. Indicative post numbers for 2027 are still to be confirmed and will appear on the posts page once released.
Prepare for success
With 24 applicants per post, being eligible and competent isn't enough. The candidates who get through have usually done four things.
They gave the Oriel application real time, especially the evidence boxes, and checked every line against the person specification. They learned the format and timing of each test and practised under exam conditions rather than casually. They used official sample questions first and reputable practice material second. And they rehearsed the interview out loud, to a six-minute clock, with someone else asking the questions.
The assessment centre is where most of the field drops out, and it's the stage that rewards practice most directly. Good practice material and support make a real difference to how you perform on the day for Watson-Glaser, RANRA and the SJT. JobTestPrep's Public Health ST1 pack covers all three, with a support team on hand if you get stuck.