For over 14 years now, Surepass driving school has been providing driving instructor training courses across the country. The company is on the Official Register of Driving Instructor Trainers, which ensures DSA learning standards are maintained. That’s one of the reasons the driving school enjoys one of the best pass rates in the UK – 90%, a whooping 67% better performance than the national average.

What can be more reliable than other people’s experiences? So as you search for a driving instructor courses, check here http://www.drivertrainingtoday.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,13992.0.html for internet forum discussions about Surepass.

Surepass adopted a variety of driving instructor training courses to better suit instructors’ needs and means. Below are short descriptions of choices available.

Group Instructor Training Course

If you are a kind of person who likes to study in a group you can sign up to this course. The pack includes 14 day trial offer (which means you can drop the school for any reason without losing money you’ve paid for the course), Part 1 home study pack, 2 days Part 2 training, Part 3 study material and 6 days Part 3 training.

2 days Part 2 training involves 2 x 7 hours in car training over one month period. 6 days Part 3 training includes 4 x 7 hours in car training and 2 x 6 hours classroom training sessions. You can use all your hours the week before your Part 3 test or distribute it over a month.

Group Instructor Training Course cost £800.

One To One Instructor Training Courses

Basically, one to one instructor training courses are geared towards people who prefer tailored tuition and look for extra benefits. Surepass provides three types of individual training courses – silver, gold and platinum. You will receive a standard training course plus benefits such as cash back and guaranteed pass.

Cash back is an option available to those driving instructors who take out a franchise with Surepass once they are qualified. The amount will be deducted from a total of franchise fees helping newly qualified instructors to pay back their training costs and start making profit as soon as possible. £100, £500 and £1000 cash back options are available under silver, gold and platinum choices accordingly.

One of the extra benefits under Platinum course is a guaranteed pass. It allows you to receive silver course as many times as you need, if failed to qualify as a driving instructor within 2 years.

What your costs will be?

Silver – £1490
Gold – £1990
Platinum – £2490

Consider these fees as you go shopping for your driving instructor training courses.

For more information visit Surepass website
Learn what those who were trained by Surepass say about their real life experiences http://www.drivertrainingtoday.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,13992.0.html

Finding an ADI is as easy as pie today. You can simply look into your local paper or surf the web. So you phone around until you think you’ve met a suitable fellow. Not the cheapest, mind you, because undervalued hourly rate will possibly mean a substandard service. Nice chat on the phone doesn’t necessarily mean the guy on the other end is as good at teaching as he is at selling.

The real testing comes during your lessons. Below are five main reasons why you should sack that nice guy before you lose your money and hope to pass your driving test successfully.

Quick Tempered

Is your ADI shouting at you? Is he losing his temper every time you make a minor mistake? If so, don’t be frustrated with yourself. You pay for being trained, and training includes making mistakes. Shouting teacher has never been a good one. You are not going to pay for being shouted at, aren’t you?

Not Enough Driving

How much driving is enough? Don’t expect you get under the wheel right away. At your first lessons, you are going to drive for about half of your lesson time. By approximately hour ten you should be driving all lesson long. If somehow you drive less than that, you are not getting value for your money.

No Feedback

Good ADI always keeps track of his learner’s progress. Getting feedback is crucial for learners so they can get an idea of how well they are doing and what are their weaknesses. It is also crucial for ADI because this helps him focus on a learner’s problems instead of simply completing lesson plans.

Mobile Phone Chatter

If your ADI keeps chatting on that mobile phone all the time, just run away. You are charged an hourly rate so his mobile phone use robs you out of time you pay for. In addition, it interrupts and interferes with learning process, let alone takes your attention off the road.

Taxi, Please

Once you drove your ADI to a shopping centre or a bank. But then you start getting this uncomfortable feeling your ADI is using driving lessons to go about his business. You are doing the driving all right, but as your teacher does his shopping, the paid time is ticking away.

No Room to Swing a Cat

If you still think that you’ve made it when you stuck that green badge in your windscreen, it is time to start really worrying. The market is packed and it would take a good deal of business skills to rip it open and shove in. Despite advertising fellows telling you that a million of people learn to drive every year, there is still no room for a newly qualified ADI. Advertising does not necessarily misrepresent, but what these chaps don’t want you to know about is how many of your competitors are out there. And there are legions of them. It is estimated there are only 19 pupils per each driving instructor on the market. It goes without saying that luring in just one of those is not easy.

Think Like a Salesperson

To survive in this environment, you first have to think how good your business skills are. Being a driving instructor in most cases means self-employment. And self-employment is in many ways like running your own business. Look at your driving school. Are they sitting around waiting for would-be driving instructors to be pouring into their offices? Hardly so. They go out there and advertise like hell! Or look at a thriving baker’s shop. Their cakes must be the yummiest in the neighborhood, right? To make your “cakes” the best, you will need to take care of the following things.

Get yourself noticed. It all starts with advertising your services smartly. An advertising technique is largely depends on the audience you target. Basically, you customers are going to be young so make sure your advertising is both entertaining and informative. The best choice is to set up a website. It should be catchy. Boring website means you are a bore. Nothing can scary a young pupil away best than a boring teacher!

Be a Good Salesperson. Reaching your audience is not enough. You should be able to convert your audience into your customers. And this magic metamorphosis can be done by phone. Answer the calls effectively. That means you need a good answerphone message when you are not available. But as you pick up the phone, that’s when your salesperson skills come into play. If you don’t have any, start learning right away. If you can’t sell, you will have nobody to teach. Professional Excellence. Eventually, your best advertising is your teaching attitude and your personal pass rates. Your successful pupils may be your reliable references and they can become your word of mouth advertising. They tell a friend, their friend tells a friend and soon you will be teaching those 19 pupils. So it doesn’t matter how good you are as a driving instructor, if you don’t have any business sense, you’ll probably be struggling.

In most cases, some exercise is better than none at all. The driving instructor needs to incorporate some physical activity during the day. You can reduce your stress by walking to the door where your learner driver lives instead of waiting in the car for your pupil to appear. You could also go for at least a 30 minute walk while your pupil is on their driving test: or parking your driving school car a few doors away from your pupils house and walking that extra 20 yards.

Practice relaxation techniques

While you’re teaching pupils, take a few deep breaths. With your arms bent at the elbow, tightly squeeze your hands into fists (taking care to ensure that your learner driver doesn’t think you’re scared!), curl your hands up so that your arm muscles become tense. Remeber to keep breathing and hold this position for 5 seconds. Slowly release the tension and notice how it feels.

Try straightening out your legs and point your toes so that your calf and thigh muscles are tensed. Hold this for 5 seconds and slowly release. Notice how your legs feel as the tension is released.

As a final step, take a few minutes to become aware of your breathing. Focus your attention on your breath as it goes in and out. Breathe deeply and naturally. Do this exercise naturally until you feel relaxed.

How well can your learner driver see?

The driver of a motor vehicle is the most important component. The driver decides which way to turn, when to use the accelerator and when to use the brakes. Learner drivers need to see and react to changing conditions very quickly.

How much you see depends on how well you can see.

Legal requirements.

The learner driver must be able to read in good daylight, with glasses or contact lenses if necessary, a stationary number plate from a minimum distance of 20.5 metres (67 feet). From September 2001, a learner driver must be able to read a new style number plate from a distance of 20 metres (66 feet). Passing this test does not imply perfect vision.

Watching your speed

1. Driving too fast for road and traffic conditions and misjudging speed and distance are the two most common causes of crashes.
2. The learner driver should always drive at a speed that will allow the pupil to stop well within the distance they can see clear.
3. The pupil must also leave enough space between the driving school vehicle and the vehicle in front so that its possible to pull up safely if it slows down or stops suddenly.

When an error has occurred, the best way to restore confidence is to repeat the action without the learner driver repeating the error. To guarantee success, the driving instructor must take full responsibility – even if you are on the way to the driving test centre when the error occurs!. All the driving instructor has to do is “tell” the learner driver when the error is about to occur – which is usually long enough for the confidence to be restored.

Hazard Perception is the drivers ability to recognise a situation on the road which is either dangerous, or has the potential to develop into a dangerous situation in which some driver action will be required. Good hazard perception requires good visual scanning and anticipation, and a good understanding of how driving situations can develop.

Hazard Perception Test Video

Why the need for Hazard Perception

• Over confidence
  Young drivers rate their own performance as above average. They are more likely to equate “good” driving with the ability to master the controls of the car at higher speeds. However, vehicle control is only part of being a good, safe driver.
• Under-estimation of risk
  Young drivers take longer to develop the risk assessment skills required to safely interact with other road users. They detect and assess hazards more slowly, and they also under-estimate the risk of a hazard resulting in a crash and over-estimate their ability to deal with hazards.
• Age
  Young and novice drivers have a higher crash rate because they are inexperienced, their cognitive and perceptual skills are not fully developed and they take more risks. They also pick up bad habits quickly.
• Lack of driving experience
  Teenage drivers have less training and experience, which leads to more traffic violations.
• Poor attitudes
  The fact that violations, rather than errors or lapses, are associated with crashes suggests that they are caused by a poor attitude to road safety, rather than a lack of skill on the part of the drivers. While it is necessary to train drivers to a basic level skill, it is also necessary to persuade or constrain drivers not to violate. Therefore road safety efforts should be focussed on attitude change as well as initial skill training.

A fairly wide selection of planned routes containing various types of traffic
hazards and conditions will be required. Flexibility is an impotant consideration
when planning a route because it allows for changes to be made midway through a
driving lesson. This may become necessary to allow more time to be spent on an area
of driving which may be proving unexpectedly troublesome, and yet still allow the
driving lesson to be completed on time for your next appointment or driving test.
Try not to repeat the same route excessively, this can lead to reducesd interest
from the learner driver, and this can lead to boredom and slow progress. Repetition
can be useful when it is carried out deliberately for a specific purpose relevant to
the driving lesson. An example could be practising control skills on the approach to
uphill junctions.

Training routes and areas fall into three main categories:

1. Nursery routes
2. Intermediate
3. Advanced

Nursery routes – require various kinds of roads. try to avoid busy roads and
initially, in the very early stages, roads with parked vehicles. These routes should
not include pedestrian crossings, traffic lights or roundabouts.

Intermediate routes – These routes should, wherever possible, be planned to avoid
dual carriageways, multi-laned roads and one way streets. Junctions which do not
conform to basic rules should also be excluded. Right turns on to very busy main
roads, and any other particularly difficult situation, should not normally be
incorporated into these routes where they can be avoided.

Advanced routes – These routes will incorporate most of the intermediate routes.
They should be progressively extended to include many variations to the basic rules
as possible.

The nature of driving instruction requires that driving instructors work with
customers who may drive you up the wall (not literally!). regardless of whether your
customer is offhand, rude, frustrated, confused or irate, most minor problems do not
have to escalate into bad feelings.

The six steps in helping a customer are:

1. Let the pupil have their say
2. Avoid getting trapped with their negative feelings
3. Express empathy with the pupil
4. Begin to solve problems actively
5. Agree on solutions
6. Continue to check they are satisfied with progress so far.

When a learner driver is upset, they want two things: First, they want to let you
know how they feel, and then they want you to help them. It’s that simple. Some
driving instructors view learners becoming tense and frustrated as an indication of
the pupils inability to understand basic facts. However trying to resolve a
situation without listening to your pupils thoughts and feelings never works. Only
after the pupil has let you know their thoughts can they begin to hear what you have
to say.

Try it and see!

Formal tuition can only be given by a trainee Instructor, or a qualified Driving Standards Agency, Approved Driving Instructor (DSA ADI), who can also help structure the private practice.

Many learner drivers only have driving lessons for one or two hours per week and their driving experience is limited to driving at the same time of day and over the same roads. Accompanying a learner driver is a good way of helping your friends or relatives become safe drivers. It’s a team effort involving you, the learner driver and the Driving Instructor.

Working together is the best way of ensuring everyone’s aim of safe driving for life.