This audit is for paediatric trainees evaluating PassPaeds before they rely on it for MRCPCH Foundation of Practice — the first written stage, a single one-hundred-question single-best-answer paper often sat the same day as Theory and Science. PassPaeds does cover FOP with a live, paediatric-specific bank, so this is a genuine coverage audit rather than a "does it exist" check. The principal limitation to flag: like any single-best-answer bank, it can build and measure applied knowledge but cannot on its own reproduce the fully unseen, timed conditions or the calibration that official RCPCH material provides.
What PassPaeds offers for MRCPCH FOP right now
PassPaeds lists a live FOP bank. As of 19 July 2026 the vendor reports the FOP count in the region of roughly 1,200 to 1,500+ questions, with the site's own pages differing on the exact figure — treat it as vendor-reported and verify the live number on passpaeds.com. Access is priced accessibly at a vendor-reported £20 for four months and £30 for six months (19 July 2026). The feature set includes revision and timed practice modes, revision notes under each question, a daily comparative performance histogram against other candidates, question flagging and personal notes, and a spaced-repetition "Knowledge Tutor" that resurfaces items on a schedule.
This is a paediatric-specialist product rather than a general medical bank with a paediatric module, which is a real advantage for FOP: the items, tags and explanations are written for this exam. The honest counterpoint is that the platform does not publish a proprietary adaptive-difficulty algorithm beyond spaced repetition, and its analytics — chiefly the peer histogram — measure your standing on seen items rather than your transfer to unseen ones. That is a normal limitation of any bank, and the audit below shows how to work around it.
MRCPCH Foundation of Practice: the official shape
FOP is the first written stage of the MRCPCH and can be sat on the same day as Theory and Science, FOP in the morning and TAS in the afternoon. It is 100 single-best-answer questions in two hours, each worth one mark, no negative marking, delivered computer-based at an exam centre or online — about seventy-two seconds per item. FOP rewards secure recognition and first-line management of common and important paediatric presentations, growth and development, safeguarding, genetics, the acutely unwell child and core therapeutics. The RCPCH publishes the FOP syllabus and official sample questions; those define the blueprint and the house style, and they outrank any vendor's difficulty labels or topic tags.
Record the live count by blueprint domain
Do not rely on the headline total. Record the live count and break it down by blueprint domain, because a large number spread unevenly can still leave a domain thin. Use a matrix like this, filling it from your own attempts rather than the marketing figure:
| Blueprint domain (illustrative) | Items attempted | First-attempt accuracy | Weekly floor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Growth, development & nutrition | — | — | set your own |
| Cardiology & respiratory | — | — | set your own |
| Neurology & neurodisability | — | — | set your own |
| Gastroenterology & nephrology | — | — | set your own |
| Infectious disease & immunology | — | — | set your own |
| Safeguarding & child protection | — | — | set your own |
| Neonatology & genetics | — | — | set your own |
The RCPCH does not publish fixed per-domain counts, so build the coverage matrix yourself from the syllabus; the method is in our guide on why completion is not coverage. A headline of over a thousand questions means nothing for your weakest domain if only a handful of them land there.
Sample question style: recall versus application
Audit the style against five axes. First, recall versus application: FOP is broad and leans toward recognition and first-line management, so a bank that mostly tests isolated recall is well matched to the paper, though the strongest items still ask for the next best step. Second, stem length and clinical realism: FOP stems are typically shorter than AKP's, and a good bank mirrors that. Third, option plausibility: weak distractors make items too easy and give false comfort. Fourth, image and data interpretation: FOP includes some, and a bank should too. Fifth, management sequencing: even at foundation level, the best items ask what you would do next, not merely what the diagnosis is. Sample a couple of dozen PassPaeds items across these axes before you trust the bank's difficulty labelling.
Jurisdiction and recency: check a stratified sample against current guidance
Take a stratified sample and check it against current UK guidance, recording the review date. For paediatrics, that means NICE and CKS for management, the Summary of Product Characteristics via the electronic medicines compendium (eMC) for any prescribing or dosing item, and national guidance for safeguarding, immunisation and growth monitoring. PassPaeds advertises evidence-based notes and a syllabus match to the current RCPCH curriculum, which is encouraging — but verify rather than assume: spot-check a dozen items for current, UK-specific guidance and note any that lag. Guidance moves, and a bank is only as current as its last editorial pass.
Format gap: growth, safeguarding, images and age-specific management
State the gap plainly. A single-best-answer bank prepares you well for the recognition and first-line management FOP tests, but some of the paper's content is only partly reproducible by isolated items: growth and development reasoning across age bands, safeguarding judgement in ambiguous scenarios, image interpretation under a seventy-two-second clock, and age-specific management where the right answer depends on the child's age and context. A bank builds the knowledge; the official RCPCH sample material and full-length timed mocks build the exam-condition judgement and pacing that a topic-filtered bank cannot. Both are needed, and neither replaces the other.
Duplication and contamination: when completion becomes recognition
Any bank you work through twice starts to measure recognition rather than problem-solving. Watch for repeated concepts and near-duplicate stems, and be sceptical of the daily peer histogram: it charts your standing on seen items, not your transfer to unseen ones, so it climbs as you re-see material even if your real readiness is flat. The spaced-repetition Knowledge Tutor helps retention but also increases exposure, which is good for memory and bad for using those same items as a clean measurement later. Keep a genuinely unseen pool you never study casually, because your Q-bank percentage is not your exam score.
Best-fit matrix: where PassPaeds sits for FOP
| Use case | Fit for FOP | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Foundation building | Strong | Paediatric-specific, syllabus-matched, affordable, with notes under each item |
| First-pass bank | Strong | Large enough live pool to make a structured first pass with domain floors |
| Second bank | Reasonable | Works as a second bank if your first is a general product; watch for concept overlap |
| Retake support | Reasonable | Spaced-repetition Knowledge Tutor helps rebuild weak domains |
| Final simulation | Partial | Use official RCPCH sample material and full timed mocks for the last calibration |
The verdict is positive but bounded: PassPaeds is a strong option to include in a FOP revision stack, particularly for foundation building and a first structured pass, provided you supply the domain floors, verify recency yourself, and keep an unseen block for honest measurement.
A seven-day plan: PassPaeds for one job, iatroX for transfer
Give PassPaeds one job — structured, syllabus-matched domain practice with its notes and spaced repetition — and give iatroX a different job: unseen, timed transfer measurement on items it has never seen you attempt. No proprietary-algorithm claims are needed.
- Day 1 — baseline. Sit a mixed, timed, unseen block of forty items in the iatroX UK bank with no assistance; record first-attempt performance by domain.
- Days 2–4 — targeted first pass. Work your weakest three domains in PassPaeds to their floors, tagging every miss and writing a one-line corrected rule.
- Day 5 — calibration. Attempt the official RCPCH FOP sample questions under time and compare your reasoning with the model answers.
- Day 6 — fresh transfer. Sit a new timed iatroX block on different topics and track your first-attempt trend rather than your cumulative percentage.
- Day 7 — review and plan. Let the Knowledge Tutor space this week's misses, retest last week's, and set next week's floors.
Continue, supplement, switch or stop
Decide on measurable gaps, not novelty or sunk cost. Continue with PassPaeds if your domains are moving toward their floors and your tagged misses are shrinking. Supplement with unseen iatroX measurement if your bank percentage feels high but you have no timed, unseen evidence of transfer, applying the two-Q-bank rule so you never repeat an item. Switch or add a second bank if a whole domain is thin in PassPaeds' coverage and you cannot get above its floor. Stop topic-drilling a domain once you can answer fresh mixed items in it under time without assistance. Compare options on the iatroX comparison hub.
FAQ
Is PassPaeds enough for MRCPCH Foundation of Practice on its own? It is a strong, paediatric-specific bank that can carry much of your FOP preparation, but it is not sufficient entirely on its own. You still need the official RCPCH sample questions to calibrate house style and a separate pool of unseen, timed items to prove the knowledge transfers rather than being recognised, especially if you sit FOP and TAS on the same day. Verify its current question count on passpaeds.com before relying on it.
Which MRCPCH Foundation of Practice component does PassPaeds not reproduce well? It does not reproduce the MRCPCH Clinical examination at all, because it is a written-SBA product. Within the written stage, the parts a bank reproduces least well are safeguarding judgement in ambiguous scenarios, age-specific management, and image interpretation under a tight clock — the elements that need official material and full timed mocks. Use PassPaeds for the knowledge and keep an unseen block for the exam-condition rehearsal.
How many PassPaeds questions should I complete per day for MRCPCH Foundation of Practice? Daily volume matters less than mix and review, but a sustainable target around clinical work is roughly twenty to forty questions a day in timed blocks, with every miss tagged and reviewed the same day and the Knowledge Tutor handling spacing. Two carefully reviewed blocks beat a hundred rushed items, because unreviewed volume trains speed without accuracy and consumes items you will later want for cleaner measurement.
When should I stop using PassPaeds and move to mixed mocks? Move to timed mixed blocks and full mocks once every blueprint domain is above its coverage floor and your first-attempt accuracy in your weakest domain has stabilised across at least two separate sittings. At that point, single-topic practice gives diminishing returns, and the pacing and endurance data from mixed hundred-item blocks — sat at the real seventy-two-second pace — become the information you need to judge readiness.
How should I combine PassPaeds with iatroX without duplicating practice? Apply the two-Q-bank rule: give PassPaeds the job of structured domain practice and give iatroX the separate job of unseen, timed measurement, and never run the same item through both. Because PassPaeds' spaced repetition deliberately re-exposes items, it is especially important to keep your iatroX block genuinely unseen, so that measurement stays honest rather than sliding into recognition.
Editorial notes and references
Written by Dr Kolawole Tytler, NHS GP and founder of iatroX. Last checked 19 July 2026; product figures described as vendor-reported were taken from public product listings on that date and change without notice — verify the current count, price and feature set on the vendor's own page, noting that the FOP count differs between PassPaeds' own pages. Disclosure: iatroX operates a competing UK question bank, so this article confines the iatroX role to unseen transfer measurement — a job the audited bank does not claim to replace. Corrections are welcome via the feedback route on iatrox.com. References: RCPCH examinations (rcpch.ac.uk/education-careers/examinations) and the official FOP sample questions; the PassPaeds FOP product page (passpaeds.com); the iatroX comparison hub and the iatroX UK bank.
Run a fresh timed MRCPCH Foundation of Practice block in iatroX →