Data Skills Test

As part of my continued assessments for my JN3800 Module,I had to find and refine a data set of my choice.

I chose to look at the different driving test pass rates across the UK. Here is the link to the original data store.

Please click on the graph to see it in a larger and clearer format. Riding of Yorkshire and Orkney didn't have any data available on the website so they can't be included in the graph.

The county of Greater London has been revealed as having the lowest pass rate for car driving tests.

London's pass rate was 33.59%. London is the highest populated city in the UK because 7.75 million currently live there, so more people are failing and passing their driving test. It is difficult to say how many. This could skew the average pass rate unevenly. London has more affulent and poorer areas too. Those with more amounts of disposable income for driving lesson will pass sooner and quicker then those who don't.

However the statistics don't feature Greater Manchester in the data. Greater Manchester is a county, but the producers of the data have grouped towns that are technically part of Greater Manchester, such as Bolton and Wigan, into the county of Lancashire. The data has done a similar thing for the Isle of Wight, which is usually classed as being part of the county of Hampshire.

Scotland has the three highest pass rates. This could be due to Scotland having a lot of country roads and a lower population then England so it doesn't have as many vehicles on the road and therefore it's easier to pass the driving test.

Paisley is listed as a county when it is in fact a town As a consequence even though it has the highest pass rate, it will probably have less people taking the test then in a whole county.

Source of London population figures(source)

Source of Paisley information ((source)

This is a website that is very skeptical about driving test pass rates and suggests ways that you can be one of the 46% or so who do pass.

This website looks at the differences in male and females passing their driving test over the past year. I did consider using this for my chart, however as the numbers are so close in some sections of it, it wouldn't make my chart very clear.

The following link assures all learner drivers that the pass rate hasn't changed since the introduction of the independent driving section of the test.

This website tells you how the pass rate has changed in the past eight years.

Finally, this link is about a driving examiner who was bullied over her pass rate.