New research shows that learners who are aware of the ‘Ready to Pass?’ campaign are more likely to agree that people should only take their driving test when you, their driving instructor, say they are ready.
As driving instructors, you know better than anyone that a well-prepared learner is more likely to pass their test. The ‘Ready to Pass?’ campaign has been reinforcing the need to listen to your expert advice since July 2022. We're now seeing concrete evidence that it's making a real difference.
It’s one of the reasons why continuing and expanding the campaign is part of our 7-point plan to reduce driving test waiting times.
In this blog post, we’ll take a look at how we’re evaluating the campaign, and some of the main differences in attitudes and behaviours of learner drivers who are aware of the campaign compared to those who are not.
The aim of the ‘Ready to Pass?’ campaign
The ‘Ready to Pass?’ campaign is trying to change attitudes towards the driving test, and encourage learner drivers to follow your expert guidance to be properly prepared.
We want to do this so more people pass their test first time, which will help to reduce driving test waiting times.
The campaign gives learner drivers information about:
- the 27 skills they need to learn
- how to combine professional driving lessons with private practice to gain more on-road experience
- managing driving test nerves
- the benefits of taking mock tests
- how the driving test works
- the risks of using cancellation finders
Monitoring and evaluating
We’re constantly monitoring and evaluating how the campaign is going. We look at things like how many people visit the campaign website and engage with our social media content.
We also ask every learner driver after their test how they prepared for it. This includes lots of questions, including if they’d heard about ‘Ready to Pass?’ and whether they’d used it. It also asks questions about their attitudes towards being prepared.
With thousands of survey responses every week, we’ve built up a lot of data. We’ve analysed this, and we can share how the campaign is influencing attitudes and behaviours.
All of the data in the rest of this blog post covers the period of July 2024 to January 2025 for learners taking their first attempt at the driving test. There were 70,201 survey responses from this group.
Changing attitudes towards being prepared
85.6% of learners who are aware of the campaign agree people should only take their driving test when their instructor agrees they’re ready. For learners unaware of the campaign, it’s 79.0% who agree.
The chart shows the percentage of learners who agreed with different statements about test preparation.
Changing behaviour for the better
It’s not just attitudes that are being shifted. Behaviours are changing as a result, too.
Structured learning
The data shows that campaign-aware learners are:
- 1.8x more likely to use a driver's record to track their progress
- 1.9x more likely to have a supervising driver that has read DVSA’s guidance on how to properly supervise private practice
- 1.4x more likely to have read The Highway Code while preparing for their driving test
Mock tests
There is a significant difference in mock test behaviour between campaign-aware learners and those who are not aware.
80.1% of campaign-aware learners took a mock test compared to 70.7% of those unaware of the campaign.
And 27.7% of campaign-aware learners who took a mock test said the main reason they took one was because of the ‘Ready to Pass?’ campaign.
Managing driving test nerves
37.0% of campaign-aware learners say they practised mindfulness techniques while preparing for their driving test. This compares with 26.5% of learners who are not aware of the campaign.
Our priorities for 2025
We have 3 main campaign priorities for the remainder of 2025.
1. Make more learner drivers aware of the campaign
Awareness of the campaign among first-attempt test takers increased from 33.5% in July 2024 to 45.9% by January 2025. We want to increase this much further so that we can spread the changes in attitudes and behaviours further.
To do this, we’ll be doing more to communicate with learner drivers at the theory test stage and earlier. We want to encourage structured learning from day one and set up the habits that will lead to both test success and safer drivers.
2. Give more support to driving instructors by making the campaign toolkit more useful
To give you more support, we plan to:
- add new coaching resources to the toolkit
- make sure newly-qualified instructors are aware of the toolkit
- provide more DVSA-led webinars on topics that will help you
- continue to encourage all instructors to do continuing professional development (CPD) activities
3. Provide resources to help with nerves and anxiety
In recent surveys you’ve told us that you’re working with more learners with anxiety. We’ll be working hard to provide:
- additional anxiety management tools
- confidence-building resources that you can use with your pupils
We’ll keep you up to date as new resources become available.
How you can support the campaign
We’re very grateful to everyone who has promoted the campaign with their pupils and the wider public. We need your help to continue doing this. The evidence is clear that learners are more likely to follow your expert guidance when they’re aware of the campaign.
Visit www.gov.uk/ready-to-pass to access our toolkit and resources to support the campaign and help achieve our joint aim of safer drivers.
1 comment
Comment by Trev Thomas posted on
Yes i totally agree with this and have always done it