The DSA (soon to be known as the DVSA) has sent out an email announcing that from 7 April 2014, the date from which the new Standards Check will replace the original Check Test, a new grading structure will be in place for ADIs.
The current scoring system has grade 4 (satisfactory), grade 5 (good), and grade 6 (excellent). Grades 1-3 are below standard or “fails”. The new system will simply have three grades: grade A (good), grade B (satisfactory), and Fail.
In all the years I have been doing this job I honestly can’t remember having been asked once what my grade is. Even when the topic has arisen later on during lessons, no one has shown any real interest in the grades. The only person who DOES have in interest is me – in the early days I wanted to improve, and in the present I want to maintain my standards. My grade was a good way of monitoring that.
I don’t have any issues with the new grading system from a practical perspective. It won’t alter the way I do my job, or affect my earnings, and unless I suddenly start being a crap instructor the chances are I’ll just end up with an A (even a B wouldn’t matter, except to my ego). Politically, though, the change is pointless. No matter what the DSA/DVSA says, parents and learners don’t give a toss about grades, and combining the original grades 5 and 6 into a single grade A hardly helps instructors “promote themselves” in any useful way. All most learners are interested in initially is passing for the least cost, then – after many have been bitten by cheapos delivering poor instruction because they’ve cut their overheads to minimise the effect of cutting their prices – a damage limitation exercise with a decent instructor charging decent prices.
Mind you, it remains to be seen whether or not the new Standards Check actually fails more instructors than the previous system. The DSA/DVSA’s preoccupation with “sub-standard instruction” that it never actually attacks head-on might come to something then.
Recently, I’ve picked up a handful of pupils from other instructors, and given the number of hours they’ve had in lessons – bearing in mind that they have now had one or two sessions with me, and I’ve been able to assess their capabilities – their lack of progress towards the test is shocking. They’re far more able than their progress suggests.
One pupil commented that she’d had over 50 hours and “couldn’t understand the stickers” in her school car because they “didn’t line up” the way her instructor kept saying. I’ve written about these bloody stickers before. They don’t work.
And another immediately stalled my car because she’d been taught in a diesel and her jackass of an instructor had taught her not to use gas (presumably, just to save him a few tenths of a penny in imagined fuel costs). I’ve written about that before, too. It happens a lot. How can you call yourself a driving instructor if your pupils can’t drive in any car other than yours if they manage to scrape a pass?
A monkey could do this bloody job – and unfortunately, they often do. Even worse, they sometimes manage to do it for years, putting on a brilliant show for the periodic check test which doesn’t pick this sort of nonsense up.
Will the new Standards Check get these kind of people off the Register? I doubt it – but until it does, any grading system will remain meaningless.
The story has been picked up in certain corners of the media. This article says:
Becoming a driving instructor has become a popular way for people to boost their income in recent years, and the authority, formerly known as the DSA, is concerned that standards in tuition are slipping.
Although I agree with them, that isn’t what the DSA/DVSA is saying at all. It might be thinking it – but it isn’t saying it. The article also says:
Learner drivers are urged to check that their driving instructor is fully qualified, by looking for a green DVSA certificate, which should be displayed in their car’s windscreen. A pink certificate indicates that the instructor is a trainee who is gaining experience as part of the qualification process.
I can see where they are coming from, but they could have worded it better and less ambiguously. Although I never had a pink licence myself, the “pinkie” remains a common route to becoming a fully qualified ADI. It is wrong to denigrate it without some sort of clarification.
If someone is hiding their pink badge, or if they lie about their status, then you should definitely dump them and look elsewhere. However, people who are openly using the pink licence for its intended purpose (and who are not charging full lesson prices) should not be dismissed outright as potentially suitable instructors.
How often is the Standards Check carried out?
It’s supposed to be once in any 4-year period. However, if you get a poor result (i.e. if you fail a check) then you’ll be tested again much sooner than that.
The Standards Check was only introduced in April 2014, and it is too soon to say whether or not DVSA will adhere to this 4-year time period. With the old Check Test, if you believe what some people say, they weren’t tested for 6 or 7 years or more sometimes. Yet it was supposed to be done within similar time periods.