ADC Exam Pass Rates: Part 1 & Part 2 Results, FY2020–FY2025

For overseas-trained dentists, the Australian Dental Council assessment pathway is a major step toward practising in Australia. One of the most common questions candidates ask is simple:

How many candidates actually pass the ADC exams?

The short answer: in FY2025, the ADC written examination (Part 1) pass rate was 12% (404 of 3,325 candidates) and the practical examination (Part 2) pass rate was 11% (205 of 1,880 candidates) — the lowest figures in six years of published data.

The Australian Dental Council publishes historical pass-rate data in its annual reports. The latest available ADC Annual Report, covering July 2024 to June 2025, includes written examination and practical examination results for FY2020 to FY2025. The ADC annual reports are published on the ADC website under its Annual Reports section. (The Australian Dental Council)

Important note: these figures show exam candidates / sittings reported for each financial year. They do not show how many attempts an individual candidate needed before passing.

ADC Part 1 Pass Rate: Written Examination Results FY2020–FY2025

The ADC reported that 3,325 candidates completed the written examination in FY2025 across more than 113 venues in 33 countries. The written examination pass rate for FY2025 was 12%, with 404 passes and 2,921 fails.

ADC Part 2 Pass Rate: Practical Examination Results FY2020–FY2025

The ADC Part 2 pass rate — the practical examination held in Melbourne — was 11% in FY2025: 205 passes from 1,880 candidates. This is the lowest practical examination pass rate in the six years of published ADC data.

The Part 2 practical examination pass rate has declined every year since FY2021, from 36% to 11% in FY2025.

What the numbers show

The published ADC data shows that both the written and practical examinations have had low pass rates in recent years.

The written examination pass rate fell from 41% in FY2024 to 12% in FY2025. The practical examination pass rate also declined, from 15% in FY2024 to 11% in FY2025.

Across the six financial years shown in the ADC report:

These totals are calculated from the ADC's published FY2020–FY2025 tables. They are useful for understanding the overall difficulty of the pathway, but they should not be interpreted as individual candidate success rates.

What the numbers do not show

The ADC tables do not show:

• how many candidates were sitting for the first time;
• how many were repeat candidates;
• the average number of attempts before passing;
• how many candidates stop attempting the exams;
• how many candidates eventually become registered dentists in Australia.

So while the data clearly shows that the ADC exams are challenging, it does not tell us the full candidate journey from first application to final registration.

Why do the pass rates swing so much?

The ADC does not publish an explanation for the variations in pass rate year-on-year, so we can only make educated guesses. But some relevant facts are on the public record, and together they explain some of the pattern.

No quota, no curve — but the pass mark is not set the same way in both exams

There is no quota and no curve in the ADC exams. The ADC publicly stated that its assessment process "is not used to limit or control the number of overseas qualified dental practitioners registering to practise in Australia" (ADC Assessment Process). The standard for all ADC assessments is the level expected of a new graduate from an Australian dental program. In theory, if every candidate meets that standard, every candidate passes.

How the pass mark is found differs between the two exams, though.

In the written exam, the pass mark is fixed: it is set before the exam and does not depend on how the other candidates in your sitting perform.

In the practical exam, the pass mark is not a fixed number. The ADC calculates it per station using a method called borderline regression, which "uses all the data of a group of candidates": examiners give every candidate a checklist score and a global rating, and the pass mark for the station is computed from the whole group's results. So the exact cut score does change from group to group. What stays fixed is the anchor — the examiners' judgement of what a "borderline" performance looks like — not a percentage of candidates who are allowed to pass. We explain this in detail in ADC Single Station Scoring Explained.

Either way, a falling pass rate does not mean the ADC decided to fail more people. It means each year's group of candidates performed differently against the expected standard. And the group changed a lot: written-exam candidates grew from 686 in FY2020 to 3,325 in FY2025 — almost five times as many.

The written exam changed in September 2021

The biggest single drop in the written pass rate lines up with a documented change to the exam itself. In May 2021 the ADC announced a revised written examination, used from September 2021 onwards. The new exam has fewer questions, all of them scenario-based, and a new blueprint — the ADC's plan for what the exam tests and how much weight each topic gets — mapped to the professional competencies. One more change: the old exam was a set of separate papers, and you had to pass each paper. Since 2021, you must instead pass each domain cluster — a group of related competencies.

FY2022 was the first full year with the new format — and the year the written pass rate halved, from 44% to 24%.

The ADC said the new exam is designed to test how you apply knowledge "in a clinical situation". Scenario-based questions are harder to pass by memorising past questions. The ADC never said this was the goal, so we cannot claim it — but the timing of the change and the drop is a matter of record. Why the rate jumped back to 41% in FY2024 and then fell to 12% in FY2025 is not explained anywhere in the ADC's reports. We simply don't know.

The written exam blueprints changed again this year. Starting with the March 2026 sitting, the ADC updated them to match the 2023 professional competencies. The ADC describes the updates as minor: results are organised into four competency clusters (social responsibility, clinical information gathering, diagnosis and management planning, and clinical treatment and evaluation), and your grade for each cluster now shows how you performed relative to the passing standard.

The pass rate counts sittings, not people

The ADC's figures count every sitting, not every person. Candidates who fail can sit again — and many do, as long as the earlier stages of their assessment are still valid. Each year's pool therefore contains more and more candidates on their second or later attempt. That is normal for this pathway.

This changes how you should read the headline number. A candidate who passes on the third attempt shows up in the statistics as two fails and one pass. So the 11% does not mean that only 11% of candidates ever make it. How many candidates eventually pass is a question the published data cannot answer, because the ADC does not report results per person.

Why are there so many more candidates?

The entrance requirement is the same — you still need a registrable overseas qualification and a successful initial assessment. What has changed is simply that more people are choosing to sit the exam.

But the two exams grow in different ways.

The written exam is not capacity-restricted. It is delivered at Pearson VUE test centres around the world — more than 113 venues in 33 countries in FY2025. When more people enter the pathway, written candidate numbers grow with them.

The practical exam is capacity-restricted. Every candidate must sit it at the ADC's own examination centre in Melbourne, so the yearly candidate number is set by two things: how many candidates fit into one session, and how many sessions the ADC runs per year. In April 2025 the ADC installed two more dental chairs, which raised capacity from 24 to 28 places per session from Period 2, 2025.

Note that the chairs cannot explain the earlier growth: practical candidates doubled from 940 in FY2020 to 1,880 in FY2025, while capacity was still 24 places per session the whole time. The arithmetic leaves only one explanation: the ADC ran more sessions per year. FY2020 and FY2021 were also held down by COVID restrictions in Melbourne, which makes the starting point of the comparison unusually low. So the doubling reflects the ADC scaling up its examination schedule — not more candidates squeezed into each session.

What this means for you as a candidate

The headline figure — 11% — describes the whole pool in one year. It is not your personal probability. Three practical conclusions follow.

First, the number is not about you. It averages over thousands of candidates with very different levels of preparation, and it counts sittings rather than people. Your own chances depend on how well you have prepared against the published competencies — not on the group average.

Second, plan for more than one attempt anyway. At these pass rates, needing a second sitting is common. Each practical attempt costs $4,775 plus travel to Melbourne, and a failed attempt adds months to your timeline. Budgeting for exactly one attempt and hoping is the most expensive plan there is.

Third, prepare for today's exam, not yesterday's. Every documented change since 2021 — scenario-based questions, competency-based blueprints, domain-cluster passing, the 2026 restructure — points the same way: away from memorising, toward clinical reasoning and communication measured against a fixed professional standard. Preparation built on recalled past questions is preparation for an exam that no longer exists.

Source

Data in this article is taken from the Australian Dental Council Annual Report 2024/25, published on the ADC website. The ADC Annual Report page lists the most recent annual report for July 2024 – June 2025 and previous annual reports. (The Australian Dental Council)