Core Competencies

Core competencies are the most important areas in your Part 3 test. During the test, the Supervising Examiner (SE) will take on a role of a learner driver. As a candidate, you will be examined on your skills of identifying, analysing and rectifying the pupil’s faults.

Identifying

One of the most helpful things about identifying faults is to prioritise them. You should be able to distinguish between minor and major faults. Another good thing is to observe your pupil more than the road. You can practice in identifying faults with your instructor or, as a passenger, in other cars.

Analysing

Well, you’ve identified the fault! Your learner driver has just cut the corner. So you would naturally say – “You cut the corner”. Unfortunately, this would demonstrate you as a poor teacher. Instead, you need to analyse WHY your pupil did something wrong. The best way to detect the reason behind the fault is to use question and answer (Q&A) technique.

Correcting

Once you’ve established the fault with your pupil and he/she understood the reason, you should move to correcting the fault. There are three basic methods of doing this – Q&A, explanation and demonstration. A method you choose largely depends on a situation and the character that SE is assuming. For example, SE can play the role of nonresponding learner. In this case, Q&A would probably be a bad idea. On the other hand, if SE seems outgoing, Q&A will be the best solution.

Instructional techniques

Supervising Examiner will also assess you on how you plan and give instruction. Instructional techniques include an ability to grade the level of instruction, planning the lesson, communicating with the pupil, giving feedback and encouragement.

Finally, let’s look at some of the most common failures of trainee ADIs when passing Part 3 test.

• Tiresome briefing. Keep your pre-lesson briefing as short and concise as possible.
• Unrealistic expectations. Your instruction must fit the level of a pupil. Expecting more than your pupil can actually do would demonstrate your inability to teach.
• Weak performance in core competencies. Any weakness in identifying, analysing or correcting driving faults.
• Over-instruction. Try to answer your pupil’s questions as short as possible. Stick to concise and logical pattern during entire training session. Giving over-detailed explanations will surely confuse your pupil.
• Discouragement. Discouraging your pupil is like a cardinal sin. As an ADI, you are expected to radiate positive approach and drive you pupil to improve his or her performance.

Good luck at your Part Three Test!

The move will be introduced in an attempt to enhance learner drivers’ understanding of the principles behind driving theory. As you know, DSA is now publishing the multiple choice questions and answers used in theory test. DSA officials believe this to be ineffective practice with learners focusing on memorising right answers instead of understanding them.

In September 2011 DSA will change learning materials for theory test, adding more sophisticated case studies. Then, from January 2012, DSA will introduce theory tests using questions which will not be available to learners.

Will this push the pass rate down? Or will it improve road safety? The answer is yours.

Anyone who makes their living by teaching others how to drive will be fully aware of the many hazards on our roads. Tailgating, speeding and overtaking on bends are all frighteningly common problems. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how gooda driver you are, if you are unlucky enough to meet someone driving their vehicle recklessly, then you may well be involved in a collision. Even driving instructors will need to make car and accident claims if they are in the wrong place at the wrong time!

And this is why it is so important to have a good standard of protection in place. Many people will simply see insurance as being a legal requirement and a rather expensive necessity; but this is an unhealthy way to think. In the wake of an accident, the quality of your cover really can make all the difference to how quickly you are able to get your life back on track. And if you run your own driving school, then this will be doubly important! For a driving instructor, a car is the singularly most important item to have. And if it is off the road, then your income will immediately grind to a halt.

Of course, anyone will want their vehicle repaired/replaced as quickly as possible after an accident, but if your livelihood depends on it, then it is so much more serious. Some insurance companies will deal with claims far quicker than others and it is well worth looking around. This is where the internet proves to be very useful; not only can we use it to get quotes, but it will also provide us with plenty of information about each insurer!

Many people will make the mistake of trying to find the very cheapest insurance, but this is often a bad idea. There are plenty of companies out there who will offer you cover for a really low price, but at what other cost? Just how comprehensive will your policy be? And how quickly will they deal with any claims? Finding the right insurance isn’t simply about tracking down the lowest quote, there is far more to it all than that.

We all like to find ourselves a bargain whenever we can, but vehicle insurance is very much an exception. So save your ‘penny-pinching’ for other products and concentrate on the quality of your cover instead! Your vehicle is very important to you and keeping it adequately protected is of paramount importance; especially if you are using it to shape the drivers of tomorrow!

ADI vs. PDI

For starters, any learner driver must know what the abbreviations above stand for. ADI is an Approved Driving Instructor. This qualification means a person has passed exams to be a professional driving instructor and is registered with the Driving Standards Agency (DSA). ADIs display their green licence (octagon) on the windscreen of their tuition vehicles. PDI stands for Potential Driving Instructors. They are licenced instructors under training who are allowed by the DSA to provide training for payment. PDIs must display their pink licence (triangle) on the windscreen of their tuition vehicles. You can understand the difference between “green and pink” for yourself. Obviously, ADIs charge more for driving lessons because they are more experienced.

How much?

The majority of learners start shopping for driving lessons with this question in mind. This approach actually turns your shopping into looking for the cheapest option. But if you want to find a good driving instructor, that option would not suit you at all. You should run away from two extremes – overpriced driving lessons and underpriced “special offers”. The national average for a driving lessonis currently around £17-£20. So make sure you shop around for the average.

Pass Guarantee

There is no such thing as pass guarantee. However, it is wise to ask your potentialdriving instructor about his or her driving test pass rate. Of course, you have no way of checking whether quoted pass rate is true. Yet, it is a good way of spotting a driving instructor who makes unreliable statements. The national driving testpass rate is 45.65%. So if your driving instructor is able to provide anything near this figure, you are in good hands.

What Is Your Grade?

Asking a driving instructor about his or her grade is one of the best ways to assess their competence. Every four years ADIs are graded by the DSA for the quality of driving tuition. Six point scale is used for assessment. Look for the following grades:

• grade 4 is competent
• grade 5 is good
• grade 6 is a very high standard

We’ve covered four basic things to consider while choosing a driving instructor. Although qualification, driving lesson cost, pass rate and instructor’s grade are all very important and relevant choice factors, personal feel is crucial. Your driving instructor can be a 6-grade ADI with the highest pass rate, but if you don’t seem to hit it off well, you probably need to try another one.

Statutory fees

Your overall expenses can be divided into two groups. One group includes statutory fees. In other words, fees you will pay to driving authorities. Your first pounds will go to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) for your provisional licence. You are not legally allowed to start learning to drive without provisional licence. So you will need to pay £50 to get started. The next fee is £31 – that much you pay to take your theory test. Be aware that if you fail to pass your test, the fee is not refundable. You will have to pay again to get a second chance. Finally, you will have to part with £62 before you can book your practical driving test. It works the same way as with your theory test. Failed test means you’ve lost your money. There is no way to cut on your statutory fees other than passing your tests with flying colors.

Tuition fees

It is this portion of your expenses that may greatly vary. The total of your tuition expenses will much depend on a driving school or driving instructor you choose and your driving experience.

Choosing the right driving school or driving instructor is crucial if you want to get value for money. Make sure you avoid two equally disadvantageous extremes – overpriced offerings from heavily advertised schools and underpriced bargains from self-employed driving instructors. What you need to search for is a driving school that is able to provide a combination of the highest pass rate and reasonable price for value. But what is that reasonable price?

We have done a research on the web, asking industry professionals and driving instructors about a basic cost of driving lesson. The cheapest you can find is about £10-12 and the most expensive may reach £25. Remember the extremes? Right! We are looking for a reasonable average, which is actually a fair market price. That average stands at about £17-19.

Having calculated an average fee for driving lessons, we now need to find out how many lessons you need to get enough practice for your practical driving test.  We will look at a learner who is between 17 and 25 years of age with no or little driving experience. Based on our extensive teaching experience we can say that a person from this group will need to get up to 25 lessons. With 25 driving lessons and £17-19 average, we arrive at £425-475 to complete your driving courses.

Note that more experienced learners will need fewer driving lessons so their expenses would be lower.  More lessons are required for learners who are too nervous or timid. Another thing that can add to the number of lessons is your age. Experienced driving instructors say that learners older than 25 basically need to get more hours of training.

Driving lessons are not the last thing a learner has to pay for. Obviously, you will need plenty of training aids to get ready for your driving test. It will depend on each individual learner how many aids he or she would use. The basic cost of training aids that you REALLY need is around £10-15.

Interested to have a look at the total?

Statutory fees: £143
Training aids: £15
Driving lessons: £425-£475
TOTAL: £583-£633

Cutting down on your costs

We said earlier that a key to saving your money is choosing a driving schooloffering a reasonable price for driving tuition. Instead of bombarding you with sales pitches, we invite you look at what Surepass driving school has to offer and think for yourself.
Operating a vast network of schools and employing its own staff of qualified driving instructors, Surepass is able to charge from £15.5 a lesson. That is almost £5 less than an industry average so you can save up to £125 with your entire driving course. For this money you are getting tuition from reliable driving instructors who are carefully assessed by the company. Instead of one-size-fits-all approach, each learner can get a tailored course based on previous experience and personal abilities.  School will also provide the training aides you need for your theory test for free. And, finally, Surepass uses the new air conditioned Vauxhall Corsa for their driving lessons, making your driving experience a pleasure.

The choice is yours!

Stay tuned to driving-instructor-trainings.co.uk for driving news and helpful articles for learners and driving instructors.

How much can you charge?

You have to realise what is involved in being self-employed. That’s what most ADIs are. It means you don’t have a merit of a steady monthly salary. ADI earnings build solely on the fees they charge their pupils. In a recession, rough national average fee for driving lessons dropped to £20 per hour. It’s not quite advantageous but still profit-making. There is a growing number of driving instructors who are charging less than that under economic pressures, but this doesn’t sound anything near a viable strategy. So let’s estimate your possible earnings using that £20 rate. You simply multiply the rate by an average number of hours to complete a lesson plan. That’s how much can you make off teaching one pupil. Done? Well, it’s too soon to jump at the figure if it looks like a deal to you.

What are your expenses?

That £20 is not all yours to spend. About half of that soon is spent to cover your business expenses such as fuel, vehicle maintenance and advertising, leaving you with about £10 out of which you will have to give HM Revenue and Customs and national insurance their pound of flesh. To cap it all, if driving instructor falls ill or their car breaks down, they get paid nothing at all. Self-employed do not enjoy paid holidays, sick pay and other benefits employees might get. So after all business overheads, tax and insurance, your net hourly income plummets to about £7.

Where is the market going?

It’s going down. The downswing brings to mind the advertising buzz about earning £30,000 a year and army of pupils eager to learn to drive. First, there is glut of supply on the market, meaning less work, tougher competition and downward prices. You have to rub your brain cells together finding ways to save your costs and lure pupils in rather than chasing that a pie in the sky £30,000. Second, with the average £20 per hour and more people cutting back on spending, you will find it awful hard to even earn a decent living. There ARE ADIs who really make that £30,000, but for a driving instructor just out of school it’s a long way to go. We are not being pessimistic though. There is always silver lining. Good news is fewer ADIs doing it, meaning the supply is going down toward the point where it can meet existing demand. So prices will stop deteriorating. Anyway, you need great deal of business sense to seize opportunities as they appear.

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.

Many of advantages to being a driving instructor are not necessarily just a sales pitch, but if you have made up your mind to take the plunge, make sure you do so with your eyes open. This post is a must read for those who are serious about embarking on driving instructor career. So here are four things you have to know about your future business.

1. Watch Your Expenses

Throughout your training process you will have to pay for a lot of things. First, you will need to buy all your training materials for theory test. The costs greatly vary depending on what you choose. Then, there is a £90 fee for the Part 1 test. Be aware, if you fail, this fee will be payable again to allow you a second attempt. As you move on to your driving training, your expenses surge with most trainers charging from £25 to £40 per hour. A total will depend on how much training you need. Here comes your Part 2 test and before taking it you will part company with £110 in a fee, payable again if you screw up your first attempt. Your expenses, however, don’t stop when you pass the Part 2. Now you can apply for your PDI licence, costing you about £140. To be fully trained for the Part 3 instructional test, you will have to find a reputable ADI trainer who may charge over £30 per hour. This is the hardest part of the whole training process and you will need a minimum of 60 hours. And again you will be charged a £110 fee for each attempt at Part 3 test. Fresh off your successful ADI exams, you will have to apply to join the register as an ADI and obtain your ADI licence. This will add another £300 on your expenses list.

2. Rigors of Being Self-employed

Be your own boss! Sounds great, doesn’t it? Well, if you can do without your job security and steady income, it does. Compared to employees, the self-employed have no guarantees whatsoever whether they can make money on their own. Your income will entirely depend on how many pupils you can steal from your competitors. Don’t forget being self-employed means dealing with your tax and insurance issues yourself.

3. Throat-cutting competition

Running your own business has never been easy. And with credit crunch gripping the economy, competition has turned into the battle of life. If somebody on the telly tells you there is a shortage of driving instructors and swelling crowd of learners, don’t jump at it. Here is more news for you. According to official statistics, as of 2 September this year, there are 45,371 approved driving instructors and 6,910 trainee licence holders. Some adverts say: “A million of people learn to drive every year”. And now let’s do a simple math. If there are 52,281 ADIs on the market, it makes roughly 19 pupils per each every year.

4. Passing Test Is Not Easy

And now comes the big news. Official data says less than 10 percent of those embarking on ADI training process actually become driving instructors. 50 percent of those quit within the first 18 months. Check below pass rates for ADI qualifying exams in 2006/2007:

The Part 1 Test: 49%

The Part 2 Test: 45%

Test of instructional ability (Part 3): 28%

We didn’t mean to scary you away, but a person who is considering a driving instructor career must know about the realities of his business before taking the plunge. There are no easy ways to earn money these days and being a driving instructor is not an exception.

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.