The AOPA Air Safety Foundation has just released a report that says student pilots and their instructors are actually less likely to have a fatal accident than already-certificated pilots

The report is call Flight Instruction Safety: An In-Depth Look at Instructional Accidents (PDF). It identifies the four phases of instructional flight most likely to result in accidents.

Flight training accounts for 22 percent of flying but is only responsible for 13 percent of the accidents. It's no surprise that most of the accidents occurred during the takeoff and landing phases of flight. The report covers both Dual and solo flight.