The state of our industry

A very reasonable question might be what is the actual state of our industry and what tools do we have for looking at it. A way of doing this is to look at driving tests and the associated numbers that come with that.

What I have done here is to provide a link to DRT121G (you will need to scroll down) so you can have your own look and perhaps tell me what you think?

Below is an extract from the the link above:

Feb 2020 was the last full month before COVID and lockdown.

Feb 2021 was a lock month with emergency tests only.

May 2025 is the last full month for which we have figures.

Number of Tests Conducted:

If we round figures to make them more easily understandable we can say that prior to COVID 140 000 tests per month and we are now doing 150 000 tests a month which means we are eating into the backlog at a rate of 10 000 tests per month.

If we look at the 14 months that we were most affected by COVID (March 2020-April 2021) we had 559 838 driving tests done which I’m going to call 560 000. Compare this against the previous 14 months (January 2019-February 2020) and we conducted 1 916 128 tests which I’m going to call 1 920 000.

A quick calculation of 1 920 000 less 560 000 means we have lost about 1 360 000 tests. At a rate of 10 000 tests a month extra we are looking at 136 months to catch up. Or to put this another way, more than 11.5 years. But bear in mind with a pass rate of 50% we are still looking at the best part of 6 years to catch up.

Pass Rate:

Instructors:

The pass rate has risen. Pre-covid it was 45.4% now it has reached 50.2% two months running. What is going on here?

Has the ADINJC training team been working miracles. There are certainly some very good opportunities for training and as an industry this is what we should be doing.

It might be argued that new instructors to the industry are driving the pass rate up. As we came out of COVID in 2021 lots of new people moved into the industry. Modern training methods, new enthusiastic instructors, it could all have played a part.

Have driving instructors improved the quality of their training as delivered to our pupils. Lots of us did some CPD during lockdown and we could be seeing the effects of that. Certainly there is a marked improvement in the pass rate post COVID.

The DVSA:

Have the DVSA had a hand in this. What about the “Ready to Pass” campaign, has it helped. It was brought in in July 2022 and the pass rate was 48.8%. Two years later in July 2024 the pass rate was consistently above 48.8% so it has been a slow burner taking two years to get back to per COVID rates.

If we look closer at these rates it becomes apparent that the pass rate is nearly always better in July and August. It might be said that a happy driving examiner thinking about holidays is more likely to produce a pass.

The more cynical of you out there might be pointing out that with very few Standards Checks being conducted, it could be that happy driving instructors are getting on with the job and not worrying about having a stranger in the back.

What is interesting is that the number of zero fault passes seems to have risen. Could it be that the marking criteria has changed. If you follow the link given earlier and look up the table of “Zero Fault Passes” you will see a consistent rise in the number of “Zero Fault Passes”.

In April 2007 the first year given in the table a test candidate had a 0.20% chance of a zero fault pass” or put another way 1 in 500. The last year given in the table April 2023 gives a 2.00% chance of the candidate having the zero fault pass or a 1 in 50 chance.

Pupils:

What about the pupils, does a longer wait mean that we have better trained pupils who are having more lessons and showing the value of our training.

Could it be that as more pupils are doing tests in non dual-controlled cars they are exercising greater awareness and responsibility thereby meeting some very important safety criteria.

Has the rise in automatic cars brought about the rise in the pass rate. Well according to DRT122E (follow the link above and scroll down) the answer is no. The latest figures show that the rate for auto is 42.8% based on 2023/24 figures and based on these figures, training with auto has had no effect on increasing pass rates.

February 2021:

For me this is the most interesting month which tells us a lot about driving tests. You will no doubt point out that with only 68 tests conducted that month it’s a very small sample. But what a pass rate: 79.4%, if this was an industry average all the problems would be solved.

This was a lockdown month and only tests for emergency workers were being conducted. What conclusions can we draw from this.

The fewer vehicles on the road the greater the likelihood of a pass. This is born out by the pass rates for rural driving test centers. As a driving licence allows you to drive on any road in the country perhaps all test centers should be located in busy urban areas so drivers have to show that they have the skills to cope.

But maybe passing in a rural area and then building up experience on the quieter roads is making the case for Graduated Driving Licences. As far as I am aware drivers who pass at the quieter centers normally build their experience up before tackling the busier roads.

Forward Bookings:

The system is bloated. It’s a problem for which every driving instructor has a solution but nobody has the answer. If you want to start an argument at your local test center say you are full of sympathy for the DVSA.

Point out that as an organisation they spend more than they earn (or at least according to their latest business plan). They are working under a series of legal constraints which regulate how they operate and in turn have to regulate us.

They are subject to political considerations and Civil Service rules of working. The political decision might be you cannot put the cost of a driving test up as this might be an inflationary measure and doing so would unfairly disadvantage the poorer people looking for jobs. Civil Service rules might say that a driving examiner is a certain pay grade and if you raise their pay everyone else on that grade would also qualify. A special case you might say and the flood gates to inflationary pay demands someone else might say.

If you are then verbally abused and possibly threatened by your fellow driving instructors for saying this, imagine what it is like to be on the receiving end of this from 40 000 driving instructors. For balance I should point out that a culture of not informing stakeholders (us) in an effective way means that they, the DVSA, are part of the problem.

Nearly three times the number of people are waiting for a test now than there was before COVID. The system has two major problems: a limited number of driving test centers and a limited number of people prepared to do the job under the current conditions.

The NHS works under similar constraints and how have they handled the waiting list problem. Their answer is different working practices, but what can we or the DVSA do?

As we saw at the beginning of this piece the DVSA is able to currently provide about 10 000 extra tests a month compared with pre-Covid conditions. But we lost 1 360 000 tests. How has the surge (where they got backroom staff onto the frontline) helped.

If we look at the period from when the surge started October 2023 till October 2024 (2,165,815 tests) and compare it to May 2021 to May 2021 (1,766,732 tests) which was the first year back we see that we have had roughly 400 000 tests eating into the backlog.

I want to say well done the DVSA, controversial I know but 400 000 extra tests over a 13 month period. We are still over a million tests behind from our start of 1 360 000 but we are getting somewhere.

960 000 at 10 000 a month is 96 months and about half of these would be failures so we are down to a backlog of 48 months or 4 years before we catch up.