PRINCE2 pass rates – Fact and Fiction

PRINCE2 pass rates are one of the first things to check when you are looking for a PRINCE2 Training Course.

Unfortunately, there’s nowhere you can go to find a list of PRINCE2 training organizations ranked by pass rate. All you can go on is what training organisations say about themselves.

In practice this means that every training organisation claims to have “above average” PRINCE2 pass rates - but the whole point of averages is that everybody can’t be in the top half all the time.

So how do PRINCE2 pass rates work?

Before January 2014, all the PRINCE2 exams in the world were run by APMG. They knew every training organisation’s pass rates. But they didn’t publish them. They never did. Even the training organisations themselves didn’t see the pass rates of all the other ATOs. Just their own.

Training organisations could get a complete list of all the exams and pass rates for all other training organizations, including their competitors. But there were no names. All you got was numbers and pass rates. APMG would say “you are number 4 on the list” or whatever, but they didn’t tell you which organisations corresponded to all the other numbers.

Today there are 8 Examination Institutes running PRINCE2 exams. As far as we know none of them publish pass rates of the training companies that buy exams from them.

How do I compare PRINCE2 training organizations then?

Fortunately, there are still a lot of ways to make sure you get a good PRINCE2 course. Here are 4 you can use:

1- Read Reviews online

Reviews and Likes mean a lot. What others say about you online is worth a lot more than what you say about yourself. A good site for reviews is TrustPilot. TrustPilot uses verified reviewers and their review system is linked to your online purchase using TrustPilot’s own software. It's a good system.

Read Advantage Learning’s reviews TrustPilot

2 - Exam Guarantees

No-one can guarantee that you will pass – that’s up to you. The real exam guarantee is about what happens if you fail. Do you get a free exam or what is the price of resit? On our UK public courses Advantage Learning gives you a free Foundation exam resit and the Practitioner at cost price. You can also retake the entire course again if you wish paying only the venue fee – which is about £35 a day

3 - Class sizes

It’s like Business Class on a flight – less people get better service. So ask your training provider what the maximum class size will be. Not the "average class size". You want to know the maximum number of people allowed in the room because this makes a big difference to the amount of time you are going to get to speak to the trainer.

On an instructor led course it's trainer that makes the difference - you are paying for an expert to explain PRINCE2 to you. If you are just one of 25 people in the room there isn't going to be much time for that to happen. Over a certain number the group dynamic changes - you stop being an active group and turn into a passive audience. The event changes from a class to a lecture. That's not good if you've only got 5 days to learn something and want to pass an exam.

Advantage Learning does not train public courses in the UK with more than 12 Practitioner students

4 - Membership of ASPECT

Is your training organisation a member of ASPECT – the Association for the Promotion of Excellence in Consultancy and Training? ASPECT is a group of premier league training organisations who commit to a charter of higher standards for PRINCE2 training. There are strict entry criteria to join ASPECT and organisations have to have at least 5 years experience of PRINCE2 training. Advantage Learning is a Founder Member of ASPECT