There is no pass mark for the NMC CBT
Search for the NMC CBT pass mark and you will find numbers. Some sites say you need twelve out of fifteen in numeracy. Others say fourteen. Some quote a percentage for the clinical part, usually somewhere in the sixties. They are stated with real confidence, often in bold, and they are guesses.
The NMC does not publish a pass mark for the Test of Competence. It sets the standard for the test statistically and keeps that standard steady across the different versions of the paper that candidates sit. When you get your result you are told pass or fail for each part, and nothing else. No score, no percentage, no breakdown by section.
There is a good reason for it working this way. Not every version of the paper is exactly as hard as every other one, because the questions are different. If the pass mark were a fixed score, a candidate who happened to get a slightly harder paper would be held to a slightly harder standard than someone who sat an easier one on the same day. Setting the standard statistically is how the NMC keeps the bar in the same place regardless of which version you are given. That is standard practice for professional examinations and it is not unique to nursing.
What this means for you is fairly simple. Aiming at a specific number is aiming at something that does not exist, and it can push you in the wrong direction. Candidates who fixate on a target score tend to start counting marks in practice papers instead of paying attention to what they got wrong, and the second thing is the one that changes your result.
It also means you should treat any site quoting you a figure with some suspicion. If they are willing to invent that, it is worth asking what else they have filled in. The same goes for pass rates. You will see claims about the percentage of candidates who pass, sometimes broken down by country. The NMC does not publish that either.
We keep a page on this because we would rather you heard it from us than worked it out later. Every exam figure on this site comes from the NMC's published test specification, and where the NMC has published nothing, we say so instead of estimating. There are fifteen numeracy questions and one hundred clinical ones. That is published. What you need to get right is not.
If you want the useful version of the same question, it is this one. You are trying to be comfortably competent across the whole blueprint rather than scraping past a line. Practise the sections you avoid, read the explanations on the questions you get wrong, and sit full mocks under the real timings so the clock is not a surprise. That is the preparation that works whether the standard sits at seventy per cent or eighty.