The percentage of driving instructors who are being recalled for Standards Checks has leaped since the start of the TIP initiative where the regulator is monitoring driving test metrics such as pass rates, number of driving errors and examiner interventions.

When the TIP campaign was launched by the DVSA, driving instructors rarely got recalled for a Standards Check (0.8% for Grade A & 1% for Grade B) – this relates to the period of August 2021 – July 2022.  However, 12 months after the launch there were immediately sizeable increases in the number of instructors recalled (2% and 2.5% respectively). The goal behind this initiative was to “raise standards”. But despite double the amount of instructors being recalled, there has been no increase in driving test pass rates.

Fast forward to the latest period of data (October 2022 – September 2023) and the rate of recalls continues to increase to 5.9% and 12.3% respectively. So year on year, the amount of recalls is snowballing exponentially. If this current trend continues, we could see recall rates of over 25% of all instructors in the next 12 months.

Interestingly, the number of instructors in both cohorts has decreased – Grade A from 9269 to 8549 and Grade B from 22854 to 22312

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