If you have been told to "do the BARB test" or found an old BARB practice booklet, start here. The British Army Recruit Battery was replaced by the Army Cognitive Test (ACT). Same job, newer test. This page says what changed, what did not, and what to practise instead.
Yes. Army staff answering on the Army's own Q&A confirmed in September 2019 that the BARB "has been replaced by the Army Cognitive Test or ACT", and in 2023 described the ACT as "essentially the same sort of thing as the old BARB, just a bit more up to date". If a recruiter, a relative or an old forum post says BARB, they mean the test that is now the ACT.
The British Army Recruit Battery was the Army's computer-based entry aptitude test from the 1990s. It is widely reported to have had five short timed sections, commonly listed as reasoning, letter checking, number distance, odd one out and symbol rotation, taken at an Army Careers Centre, producing a General Trainability Index (GTI) score that decided which trades were open to you. Those section names come from prep sites and candidate accounts, not from an official Army page, so treat the list as a good description rather than a specification.
Closely, section for section, which is why the Army calls the ACT an update rather than a different test. Letter checking became Error Detection: spot how many characters differ between two strings. Number distance became Number Fluency: work two sums and say which is greater. Symbol rotation became Orientation: hold two arrow rules in your head and pick the matching pair. Odd one out became Word Rules: count how many words fit their category. Reasoning became Deductive Reasoning: two comparison statements, then who is fastest or lowest. This mapping is ours, from sitting the official practice; the Army does not publish a crosswalk.
The purpose and the output. Both measure trainability, how quickly and accurately you take in new information under time pressure, not what you know. Both produce a GTI score, and each Army role still has its own GTI requirement. Both are short timed sections on a computer where the clock is the difficulty. If you understood what the BARB was for, you understand the ACT.
The formats are newer, the test is delivered by an external provider, Mindmill, and there is now an online screener on your application portal that Army staff say is used as practice before the real sitting at the assessment centre. The Army also links to a free official practice test, which the BARB never had. And the sections are taken from memory: in most of them the rules or sums disappear when you press Next Step.
Army staff say getting questions wrong "will impact your score but this is only part of how the results are formulated". The exact formula is not published. The safe reading: speed matters, accuracy matters, and guessing wildly is not free. Our mock test scores on that basis and says so.
A little, for the habit of working fast on simple items. Not much beyond that, because the formats differ and the memory element is new. Practise the five current sections, timed, with the stimulus hidden, which is what the real test does. The Army's own free practice covers the formats untimed; timed practice is what builds the speed.
The Army links to a free, untimed practice test run by Mindmill on its soldier assessment page: use it to learn the five formats. Then practise against the clock. Our free taste gives you five timed questions in each section with no sign-up; the week pass gives unlimited questions and a Full Mock Test on the real timings with a GTI estimate.
Sources: ask.jobs.army.mod.uk staff answers of 2 Sep 2019 (replacement and scoring) and 14 Jun 2023 ("essentially the same"); jobs.army.mod.uk soldier assessment page. BARB section names: widely reported, not official.
Practise the current five sections free →Five free questions per section. No account, no sign up.
Army ACT Prep