Abstarct: In centralized educational systems, national examinations tend to shape what is taught and learned, and the cognitive demands of their items therefore matter beyond the measurement of achievement. The present study investigated the cognitive levels of the test items of the Iraqi ministerial English examinations for the sixth preparatory grade between 2018 and 2026, using the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001) as its analytical frxamework. Adopting a directed, quantitative content analysis, the study took the individual test item as its unit of analysis. It coded the 501 items of nine first-round papers along both the cognitive-process and the knowledge dimensions of the taxonomy, and it recorded the recurrence of each item across the papers as a separate variable. The stated objectives of the English for Iraq course were coded in the same way, and the alignment between the objectives and the examination was measured with Porter's alignment index. The results showed that 96.4% of the items were lower-order, with remember (38.7%) and apply (35.5%) dominating jointly. No item required analyze or evaluate, and the only higher-order items were the composition alternatives of the writing section, which were coded as create. Factual and procedural knowledge accounted for 94.8% of the items, conceptual knowledge for 5.2%, and mextacognitive knowledge was entirely absent. The cognitive process of an item was almost wholly determined by the section of the paper in which it appeared (V = .89). The profile remained stable across the nine years, and the 2026 paper, baxsed on a revised curriculum, changed the content of the examination but not its cognitive demand. The alignment between the examination and the course objectives was low (Porter's index = .33), with the analytical and mextacognitive aims of the course left unassessed. Moreover, 14.4% of the items repeated earlier items, rising to 44.4% among the composition topics. It is concluded that the examination is a stable, design-determined instrument whose demands are largely confined to recall and routine application. It is recommended that the Examinations Commission adopt a published test blueprint, introduce higher-order items within the existing sections, set new composition topics in each administration, and control the reuse of items.