The driving test report explained: faults, DL25 and what next

A learner walks back from a failed test holding a sheet of paper with a row of ticks on it, and the first thing they want to know is why. The sheet is the driving test report, form DL25, and it is one of the more useful documents an instructor gets handed.

This is how the marking works, in DVSA’s own words, and then what a school does with the report once the learner has stopped being upset.

The three kinds of fault

The examiner marks against a fixed set of outcomes and grades every deviation into one of three bands. The gov.uk guide gives the short version:

• a dangerous fault “involves actual danger to you, the examiner, the public or property”
• a serious fault is “something potentially dangerous”
• a driving fault “is not potentially dangerous, but if you keep making the same fault, it could become a serious fault”

The guidance DVSA gives its examiners is more precise, and the precision matters when you are explaining a result. A driving fault is “one that falls short of or deviates from the defined outcome of the standard of driving of a safe and competent driver”. A serious fault “is one that is potentially dangerous or entails a breach of the law”. A dangerous fault “is one involving actual danger to the examiner, candidate, the general public, or property”.

There is also a grade below driving fault that never appears on the report: “any insignificant deviation from the defined outcome that does not compromise safety or can be a matter of finesse” is “not worthy of recording”. A slightly late mirror check on an empty road is not a mark. The examiners are told, in their own guidance, that assessment “is based on the making of safety decisions and vehicle control”.

The pass mark

To pass, a learner must make “no more than 15 driving faults (sometimes called ‘minors’)” and “no serious or dangerous faults (sometimes called ‘majors’)”.

The first consequence is that a single serious fault fails the test on its own. Fourteen driving faults and one serious is a fail; fifteen driving faults and nothing else is a pass.

The second is the accumulation rule. The examiner guidance says: “In isolation a driving fault does not result in failure to pass the test. However a candidate who habitually commits a driving fault in one aspect of driving throughout the test, cannot be regarded as competent to pass the test. The repeated fault can then be assessed as potentially dangerous.” So a learner can fail with well under fifteen driving faults if too many of them sit under one heading. A report showing four ticks against use of mirrors and a serious in the same box is that rule in action.

The headings on the report

The DL25 is organised by competency. Each row is one aspect of driving, and the examiner puts driving faults in the row they belong to, with a separate mark for serious and for dangerous. Reading down the form as DVSA publishes it, the headings are:

• eyesight test
• manoeuvres: which one was set (reverse to the right, reverse park on the road or in a car park, forward park), then control and observation
• show me / tell me
• controlled stop
• control: accelerator, clutch, gears, footbrake, parking brake, steering
• precautions
• ancillary controls
• move off: safety, control
• use of mirrors: signalling, change direction, change speed
• signals: necessary, correctly, timed
• junctions: approach speed, observation, turning right, turning left, cutting corners
• judgement: overtaking, meeting, crossing
• positioning: normal driving, lane discipline
• pedestrian crossings
• position / normal stop
• awareness and planning
• clearance
• following distance
• use of speed
• progress: appropriate speed, undue hesitation
• response to signs / signals: traffic signs, road markings, traffic lights, traffic controllers, other road users

The same sheet is published by DVSA for instructors to use: “You can use the driving test marking sheet (DL25) if you’re a driving instructor carrying out a mock driving test.” A mock test marked on the real form, against the real headings, is the closest a learner gets to the real thing before the day.

What the examiner says at the end

Pass or fail, the examiner will “tell you what faults you made”. On a pass they hand over a certificate; on a fail the learner has to “book another test and pay again” and pick “a date at least 10 working days away”.

That debrief at the kerb is short and the learner rarely takes it in. The report is what survives, and the report is mostly marks in boxes, with a fault-descriptions section that says what the examiner saw, not why. What it cannot say is where on the route it happened or what the learner was thinking at the time. Those are what the next lesson plan needs, which is why the instructor should be there for the debrief. The form has a box for exactly that: “Debrief witnessed”, yes or no.

Turning a failed report into a lesson plan

A failed report is a diagnosis. The mistake is to treat it as a list of things to “go over” in the next lesson, drive around for an hour touching each one, and book again.

Better is to read it in three passes.

First, the serious or dangerous fault. There is usually one, occasionally two, and it is the reason for the result. Find out what happened: the heading, the location if the learner remembers it, and the decision behind it. A serious under junctions for observation is a different problem from a serious under junctions for approach speed, and the form tells you which row it was but not what the learner was looking at. The next two or three lessons are built around that one heading until it is reliable in unfamiliar places, not just on the road where it went wrong.

Second, any heading with a cluster. Three or more driving faults in one row is the accumulation rule waiting to happen next time. It is also often the underlying cause of the serious: a learner who is late on mirrors at every change of speed will eventually be late at the one that matters. Clusters get a lesson of their own.

Third, everything else. Single driving faults spread across the sheet are noise. Note them, mention them, and do not build a lesson around them.

Then plan the retest date from the lessons, not the other way round. If the serious needs four lessons to become reliable, the earliest sensible date is after the fourth.

Why logging every attempt matters

Most schools keep the report somewhere, in a folder, a photo on the instructor’s phone, a note in the diary. Few keep it in a form they can look at across learners.

The value of logging attempts is that patterns only show up in aggregate. One learner failing on roundabouts is a learner. Five learners from the same instructor failing on roundabouts at the same centre in a year is either a teaching gap or a road.

It also keeps the retest honest. When the second attempt’s report comes back, the useful question is not “did they pass” but “did the serious go away, and did anything new appear”. That is only answerable if the first report was recorded against the same headings you are teaching to.

Where Passdesk fits

Passdesk records each test attempt against the learner: the date, the centre, the result, the attempt number, the examiner’s initials if the school wants to track them, the count of driving faults and of serious or dangerous faults, and a free-text note for what happened. Attempts sit on the learner’s record alongside their lessons rather than in a folder.

The progress rubric is where the report meets the lesson plan. Its skills are grouped into control, manoeuvres, junctions, road types and conditions, and the list was mapped to the DL25 headings, so signals, use of speed, following distance, pedestrian crossings, positioning, clearance to obstructions, independent driving and awareness and planning are each a skill an instructor can mark. Each skill is marked as not covered, needs work, working on or mastered, and a mark can be tied to the lesson it was made in, which makes “did the serious go away” a question the record answers.

That makes the failed report a short job: find the heading, open the learner’s rubric, and mark what the next few lessons are for. Scoring the rubric in the car covers how to keep that habit going without adding time to the lesson.