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@user36820
I agree with everything you said about making progress etc, speed should be related to the conditions. But unfortunately, just recently I was reminded of the 'you must make progress' thing with our daughters test, and how I had experienced the same thing. Unfortunately instructors (and I'm talking about instructors from both big name organisations and smaller independents), are telling their pupils to travel at the speed limit, and to take gaps into traffic that IMHO are not sufficient.
Daughter had two instructors - fired the first one when it became apparent that the pressure to 'make progress' was wrecking her confidence and during the times she was driving with me I could see her driving getting worse and worse. The repeated line was "You are not capable of making sufficient progress. You are going to fail your test". First one also told her that she should overtake vehicles on a straight road with blind rises, because she should know what if any vehicles were in the dip, having seen them descend into the dip (the particular road is known locally as the 'switchback'). How the hell one is to figure out what vehicles may have entered the road from driveways in the dip I still don't know.
Second one, was far more reasonable about the making progress thing, had her confidence restored in one session, but still needed progress to be made in excess of what I personally consider safe.
My test, 15 years ago, was somewhat unusual, as it only lasted 15 minutes. During the course of my test, there was a roundabout at the top of a blind rise, that I and the examiner felt I had approached too quickly, which he mentioned to me at the end, so I got an opportunity to pass on how I felt about this making progress and driving at the speed limit stuff, particularly on unfamiliar roads and that I had found that during the course of my tuition for the test that there were various things required of me during the test that I would quite simply not continue to do. He agreed that it 'could' be a problem and went on his way.