Monday Roundup — 21 September 2026

Morning everyone, and welcome to this week's roundup. The mornings are darker, the roads are busier, and our learners have been quietly getting on with some really good work. Here's your tip, your news and your wins for the week.

This week's top tip

Dual carriageways have a reputation for being intimidating, and almost always for the wrong reason. Learners tend to assume the difficulty is the speed. In practice, the speed is the easy part — the car does most of that for you. What actually makes a dual carriageway feel hard is the decision-making, and the good news is that decision-making is something you can rehearse long before you ever get there.

The skill worth practising is matching your speed to what you're joining. On a slip road, the aim is to arrive at the end of it already travelling at roughly the speed of the traffic you're joining — not hoping to sort it out once you're there. Look early and look far ahead: find your gap while you're still building speed, rather than reaching the give-way line at 30mph and trying to make a decision from a standstill. Joining slowly is far more unsettling for everyone than joining briskly.

Turning right across a dual carriageway is the same skill in a different shape. You cross one carriageway, wait in the central reservation, then deal with the second — two separate decisions rather than one enormous one. And if your view is restricted, the answer is exactly the same as it is on a quiet residential road with parked cars in the way: creep forward slowly until you can see, then commit. Same skill, bigger road. That's worth remembering, because it means you've probably been practising dual carriageways for months without realising it.

Same skill, bigger road. Most of what feels new on a dual carriageway is something you already know how to do.

Driving news you can use

There was some genuinely encouraging news in the DVSA's latest figures this month. More than 2.13 million practical driving tests were carried out in the twelve months to August 2026 — the highest rolling twelve-month figure on record — and there were around 50,000 more tests available at the start of September than there were at the same point last year. Examiner numbers are at their highest level since 2017. Why it matters: after several difficult years, the number of tests going into the system is finally growing, which is what eventually brings waits down.

That said, it's worth being realistic about what that means for your own booking. The DVSA's target is for learners to wait no more than seven weeks between booking and sitting their test, and in August only around four in ten learners actually did. The national average sits at roughly eleven weeks, and some individual test centres are considerably longer than that. Why it matters: capacity is improving, but it hasn't yet translated into a short wait everywhere. Book early, be flexible on centre and time of day, and treat your test date as a deadline to work towards rather than a surprise at the end.

One more bright spot: pass rates are the strongest they've been since the pandemic, staying above 50% for nine months running and reaching 52.1% in August. Why it matters: learners are arriving at test better prepared than they were a few years ago — a reminder that proper preparation, rather than rushing to book, is what actually gets people through.

Weekly wins 🎉

A smaller list this week, but two really thoughtful pieces of progress worth shouting about.

• Rachel explored how dual carriageways of different sizes change what's being asked of her, and made the connection between using the central reservation to turn right and the peeping and creeping she already does when emerging past parked cars. Spotting that a skill transfers from one situation to another is a genuine sign of a thinking driver.
• Theno had a lesson with a new instructor while Amy sat in the back, and worked on assessing the situation ahead to choose the right speed on approach. Trying something new with a different instructor takes a bit of nerve on its own — doing it while working on judgement rather than just car control is a real step forward.

Well done both. If you've got a win of your own this week — a pass, a first, or just something that finally clicked — tell your instructor. We love putting them in here.

Have a good week, and drive safely out there.