FRCOphth Part 1 question bank and exam guide

Part 1 FRCOphth is a theoretical written exam on the learning outcomes from the first two years of Ophthalmic Specialist Training (OST), testing basic and clinical sciences and patient investigations, with no clinical component. It is one of four exams required for Fellowship, alongside the Refraction Certificate, Part 2 FRCOphth Written and Part 2 FRCOphth Oral. Part 1 alone earns no certificate; Part 1 plus Part 2 Written earns the CertRCOphth.

Any medically qualified doctor can sit it, anywhere in the world, with no ophthalmology experience, provided the qualification is approved by the GMC or the Irish Medical Council. Doctors who are not GMC or IMC registered upload an attested copy of their medical degree. The exam is in English; no IELTS score is required, but the College expects candidates to be at about IELTS Level 7.

UK OST trainees must pass before entering year three (the end of Level 1 in Curriculum 2024), and a pass stays current if you enter or re-enter training within seven years. The information pack says Part 1 must be your first FRCOphth component, but the 2026 exams page says the Refraction Certificate can come before or after it; check with the College if you want to sit Refraction first.

Part 1 is two MCQ papers of 90 questions each, 180 in total, with two hours per paper, sat on the same day with a one-hour break. Every question is single best answer from four options, which works out at 80 seconds per question. The College's sample questions ask which option is MOST likely or LEAST likely to be correct, so read every stem for that word.

The exam is remote proctored at home or at work on BTL's Surpass platform. A live proctor watches your screen, your webcam and a smartphone or tablet running the ProctorExam app as a second camera, and the College asks for an upload speed of at least 1.5 Mbps. There is no test center, and each candidate gets a time slot based on where they are in the world.

Part 1 runs three times a year, in January, April/May and October. In 2026 the sittings were 21 January and 15 April, and the next is 14 October 2026. The College has not yet published dates after January 2027, the January 2027 results date or 2027 fees.

The 2026 fee is £725, with no separate international fee listed. First-time applicants use the Part 1 first-time application form, due by 5pm on the Wednesday before the closing date; returning candidates book through My RCOphth. Withdrawing after the closing date needs exceptional circumstances with evidence and costs a 20% administration charge plus £50 from the online exam provider, and lack of preparation is not accepted as a reason.

The pass mark is set in advance using the Ebel method and applied to your total score across both papers. With one pass mark for the whole exam, a stronger paper can offset a weaker one, but a fail means re-sitting the whole exam. Results are emailed after the Senior Examiner board verifies them, which the information pack says takes about four weeks, and pseudonymized pass lists are published online.

Recent pass marks have sat between roughly 61% and 65% (see the table above). In January 2026 the mean score was 105.3 of 179 (58.9%), almost 10 marks below the pass mark of 115, so the average candidate did not pass. Aim to score comfortably above that range on timed, mixed practice, remembering that bank percentages do not map exactly onto the real exam.

The Part 1 pass rate is low and varies by sitting. From April 2024 to January 2026 it ranged from 32.3% (April 2024) to 70.9% (October 2024); leaving out October 2024, it stayed between about 32% and 52%, with 41.2% (77 of 187) in January 2026. The April 2026 pass list has 95 candidate numbers, but the College has not yet published how many sat or the pass rate.

From May 2014 to January 2026, 2,730 of 6,087 candidates passed, a 44.8% pass rate. The cumulative rate is 40.9% for January, 40.9% for April/May and 49.8% for October sittings. Treat these as context, not a forecast for any one candidate.

The official syllabus lists basic and clinical science outcomes BCS1-6, 8 and 12-16, and patient investigation outcomes PI1-14 and 16, from the OST curriculum. The information pack still uses these older codes, and the College has not said whether Part 1 will be rewritten for Curriculum 2024.

The January 2026 blueprint of 179 items shows the actual weighting: Optics 45, Pathology (including immunology and microbiology) 34, Miscellaneous (statistics, epidemiology and unspecified) 28, Anatomy and Embryology 27, Physiology (including biochemistry and cell biology) 18, Investigations 14, and Pharmacology and Genetics 13. October 2025 was almost identical. Optics alone is about a quarter of the exam.

The College's non-exhaustive reading list includes Forrester's The Eye: Basic Sciences and Practice, the AAO BCSC volumes 1-4, Adler's Physiology of the Eye, Snell's Clinical Anatomy of the Eye and Elkington's Clinical Optics.

Start with the College's sample MCQs to learn the stem style. Then use a question bank for volume: do timed blocks of 90 questions in two hours, read every explanation, including for questions you got right, and track scores by blueprint category so optics, pathology and statistics get the time their weighting suggests.

OphthoMentor, an independent bank, organizes questions by the 13 BCSC-aligned subspecialties rather than by RCOphth learning-outcome codes. For Part 1, the most relevant sections are Clinical Optics, Fundamentals, Pathology and Tumors, and General Medicine, which are closest to the optics, basic-science and pathology content that dominates the blueprint, plus Neuro-Ophthalmology for visual pathways. All 713 published questions are in the free tier, which needs no card and does not expire. Every question has an explanation, many with decision flowcharts, and there are timed mock exams, weak-topic drills, a spaced-repetition review queue and a readiness dashboard. Premium (299 SEK a year) adds spaced-repetition review on every question and unlocks every oral case station, which Part 1 does not need.

Know the limits. OphthoMentor's questions are original SBAs that the site says are checked against BCSC, Kanski and clinical guidelines; they are not RCOphth past papers and are not mapped to the Part 1 blueprint. The bank also carries EBO-style true/false items, a format Part 1 does not use, so prioritize the single-best-answer questions. Check any bank's coverage of biostatistics, instruments, lasers and genetics, fill gaps from the College reading list, and treat any readiness estimate as a guide, not a prediction. The free library is at ophthomentor.com/ophthalmology-questions.