Choosing a Driving Instructor
People choose a driving instructor in various ways, the most common being:
- By recommendation of a friend or relative.
- Phoning around to find the best price and offers.
- Searching Yellow Pages, Thomson Directories and local newspapers for the advertisements which catch their eye.
- Choosing well known National company eg. AA and BSM.
- Choosing the first listing of advertisements for convenience.
- Finding a local instructor.
- Selecting the car you prefer because of the colour, model or year of manufacture.
- DSA: Grades for instructors.
- Instructors pass rates.
- DSA Statistics taken from 8,000 test candidates.
Recommendations
Choosing an instructor through recommendations by friends or family.
If your friend or relative has passed with a certain driving instructor and you have observed their driving and judged them to be a good driver, then this can be a useful means of choosing a good driving instructor.
Unlike classroom teaching Driving Instruction is on a one-to-one basis, because students are able to determine a good teacher and can make comparisons between classroom teachers’ abilities. This is not so easy when you have no one to compare with. Hence most people who pass think their instructor is the best. Success rates in passing can be a good indicator of an instructor’s ability.
Phoning around to find the best price and offers
Some people believe that the cheapest or dearest lessons are the best.
Sometimes cheap lessons can mean quantity rather than quality lessons.
Unfortunately you don’t always get what you pay for. (See large Company’s & Franchisee’s, etc.)
Adverts in the newspapers, Yellow Pages and Thomson Directories
Some of the most popular means of finding a driving instructor has been through Yellow pages, Thomson Directories or in the local newspaper. Advertising is a very effective means of displaying information and large adverts always seem to capture the imagination “the biggest is always the best”. Many of the larger advertised driving schools are franchised such as the AA and BSM. However they might not always employ the best instructors.
Employed or have Franchised with a company
Driving instructors either work for these organisations or pay for a franchised licence. At any rate they have to work longer hours to pay for these franchises or make profits for their employers. Therefore they are more likely to be tired. Often they work in different towns commuting from one town to another. This can affect their knowledge of a particular town or place to a lesser degree than an instructor who teaches in just one locality. Sometimes you may have different instructors without any consideration or explanation offered.
Fully qualified driving instructors have green badges supplied by the DSA. Any instructor with a red badge displayed on the left hand corner of the front window is a provisional instructor who is not fully qualified. Some franchise organisations (except the AA) employ some Provisional Driving Instructors. Therefore you could be paying for an instructor who isn’t fully qualified and is still learning to teach yet there is no reduction on the cost of the lesson.
Most driving instructors are self-employed and the added bind of responsibility of operating independently can be a turn off for some instructors. Therefore some instructors work for employers or franchises so that they have less responsibility than the independent instructor (e.g. no advertising or publicity to organise, the organisations do that for them). They have less worries in obtaining clients; the franchised institutions sort pupils out too.
The larger franchised organisations don’t always get the best results. Ask any self employed person, “Do you work harder when you work for yourself or do you work harder when working for some one else?” Discover the answer for yourself.
One of the advantages of working for a franchised organisation is that they send their instructors on courses to improve their effectiveness.
Some of the larger institutions have developed approaches to teaching
using personalised assessment records that are more detailed than the standard set offered by the DSA.
Intensive Courses
Little and often is a more effective strategy for learning according to the driving instructors manual. Pupils can be overwhelmed with information
on driving and switch off. Therefore dividing the lessons up into I hour sessions twice a day is more effective than say a 2 hour session once a day. Beware of any one trying to get you to organise their lessons on this basis. Benefits for an instructor can mean saving an hour or more over the course of the day.
Looking for the first listed advert
When we are looking for information for whatever reason most listings are prepared on an alphabetical basis. This is why organisations and business advertising try to name their business by using letters at the start of the alphabet.
Local Driving Schools
Usually local instructors will be familiar with the road network infrastructure. Being familiar with the town can save precious time in looking for appropriate roads for a given lesson. Usually local driving instructors take drivers with limited experience on novice routes and gradually build up to intermediate and eventually advanced routes in accordance with the drivers experience.
Undermining Student Confidence
Taking pupils into complicated situations where the pupil is exposed to conditions they are not ready for is similar to taking someone into a swimming pool, throwing them in at the deep end and asking them to get on with it. This can have a devastating affect on a student’s confidence.
The Appearance of the Car
We live in a world where the appearance, design, registration, colour, and make of a car can have an overriding influence when choosing an instructor. However instructors who use an older vehicle either:
- Have no intention of investing into the business
- Their business is not successful enough to provide sufficient means to
buy a new car.
Check Tests for Instructors
From time to time the DSA do checks on driving instructors to determine the instructor’s capability. Each instructor is then graded in accordance to his teaching performance on that one hour lesson. Grades 6, 5, are reserved for the best instructors grade 4 is regarded as an acceptable standard and 3, 2, 1 is substandard and would require a re-check test.
Usually Grades 5&6 instructors are checked every 4 years, grade 4 about every 2 years.
You can ask to see details of instructors grades, however driving instructors are not obliged to give these details. Unscrupulous instructors could give false details of their grade because these details cannot be verified.
Details of instructors grades are not available for public scrutiny or verification and are subject to Data Protection.
DSA Statistic Analysis
Driving instructors receive details of their Pass rates each year. Details would include areas within the syllabus where their students where marked down for minor, serious, and dangerous faults on test. Last year no results were given to instructors because there was some controversy over the information collected. The methods of collecting information
have now been updated to the degree that all information regarding tests is scanned leaving less margin for error.
You can ask to see details of instructors pass rates, however driving instructors are not obliged to give these details. Unscrupulous instructors could give false details of their pass rates because these details cannot be verified.
Details of instructors pass rates are not available for public scrutiny or verification and are subject to Data Protection.
STATISTICS FROM THE DSA DISPATCH AUTUMN 2004 EDITION SOME DETAILED INFORMATION
The DSA sent out 8,000 questionnaires to candidates who had passed their test recently. These are some of the facts they discovered.
Learning to drive
- Females 14.6 months
- Males 12 months
- On average candidates had 20 lessons before putting in for the Theory Test.
- Over 99% had lessons with professional Driving Instructors
- Almost 50% of candidates had private practice with friends or relatives
Average hours practice with friends or relatives
- Females 32.3 hours
- Males 32.9 hours
- The average amount of professional driving lessons since 1988 has increased from 32 to 45 hours
Average hours professional tuition
- Females 51.9 hours
- Males 36.2 hours
After the test
- 20% of new drivers have an accident in the first 6 months after passing their test and a further 16% within the following 6 months
- Around 15% of new drivers have taken Pass Plus lessons
Therefore be aware of any driving instructor giving advice on the number of driving lessons who is willing to predict your ability to drive in 20 lessons.
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