To feel scammed by driving instructor?

[AmusedLemonFatball]

Dd17 (18 this month) has been having lessons for nearly a year,

her instructor only does 1 hour lessons and for the first 2 months all she did was 2nd gear around the town.

Shes a confident and fab driver, but today she failed her 3rd test.

Because she has never been to the test centre town which is 20 min drive away. She got a spiral round about which she’s never done and road signs which he never taught her.

it wasn’t until today I realised how little road stuff he’s taught her. The first test she got a minor because he hasn’t shown her how to turn her lights on “because they are automatic”. Her last two tests were small fails, first for taking a corner too wide and second for junctions. Neither a Dangeous.

but I’m really annoyed for her, and myself. It’s cost us a lot of money.

iv managed to book in a 2 hour lesson with another instructor to find out what foundations she’s missing so we can see how many extra lessons she needs and hopefully she will be ready next month.

im so upset for her and feel guilty for not realising sooner, the amount of times she would come home 15 mins before her lessons finished 😩.

Everyone is different.
I passed my driving test after four lessons (the fourth being immediately before the test itself).
Had my own car so could practice as much as I wanted plus I had previously passed my moped & motorcycle tests so was road wise.
Has the lessons to knock off any rough edges or bad habits but followed my instructors advice on how many lessons I required.

One test failed for too wide on a corner - perfectly feasible
One test failed for 'junctions' - I would guess junctions observation - again perfectly feasible.

EDIT: Oh and you don't get some magical test feedback in written form. Simply a list of the faults marked. You get a verbal debrief on the test by the examiner, but people who have failed tests rarely take the information in properly.

Surely she would know road signs from having studied for and passed her theory test? And road markings, and what the headlights symbol looks like (so she can find it even if it's not her instructor's car)? It also sounds like she's not a fab driver if she's taking corners too wide and messing up junctions? I'd take her out myself tbh

I'm guessing she had a year of lessons due to failing 3 times and probably a few months between each test.

If you pay for an hour you get an hour. Its not always driving though. It could be parked up for a short while the bits she needs to understand and learn.

It is always recommended to drive the test routes on your lessons so you become familiar with the roads. Is her test out of your area?

OP says these weren’t dangerous (suggesting not majors). I know what they look like, I was wondering whether they had more minors etc to actually help rather than just stabbing in the dark at what the problem may be!

I'm sorry your DD has failed her test again.

First of all, taking a lesson with another instructor is a good idea to determine where her knowledge gaps are.

Also, your DD really needs to take ownership and carry on learning outside of her lessons. My eldest DD started weekly lessons on her 17th birthday. She had The Highway Code, plus other DVLA books. She read these religiously, and when out and about, she would point out signs and road marking and tell me what they meant. She also did various practice online tests.

On DD's lessons, she would drive around the area where her test would be, at different times of the day and night, starting from the test centre She also had some old test routes to follow, which we religiously did a few times every week as well as her lessons, in order to boost her confidence.

My DD drove home on her very first lesson. Yes, it was on quiet roads on our estate, but she drove. We were lucky to find a really good instructor, and I have now booked him to start teaching my DS later this year.

All of the above really helped my DD, and she passed her test first time 8 months after starting lessons. Mind you, she was ready a couple of months before that, but the wait list was awful, so she had to wait a bit longer.

Good luck!

My DD’s instructor took her to the driving centre and did the routes around - it is about a 15 minute drive from our house. Lessons are two hours. She did fail her first test - she was so nervous I wasn’t surprised - but I think the instructor prepared her, she does needs more practice. It’s also crap that it’s so hard to get another test booked within a reasonable time frame so they have to do even more lessons.
I think your DD needs another instructor.

Your instructor doesn't sound great but then it sounds like she's also at fault here.

On the instructors side;
He proabably should've taken her around the local test routes so she's familiar with them

On your daughters side;
Was she doing any private practice?
On the spiral roundabout thing they can be confusing at first but part of the test is assessing how she would respond in those situations where she maybe isn't as familiar. What would've happened if she'd passed and then ended up on a spiral roundabout a few weeks later by herself?
There's very few road signs that wouldn't come up on the theory test. It's not his job to teach her every road sign, she should be doing her own learning on this. Unless of course it's one of the rare ones that you never see (Like the one below) in which case fair enough if she was a bit confused. But on the whole she should know what most of them are.
Things like "how do the lights work" are a standard question part of any show and tell portion of the test. If she can't answer that basic question should she really be on the road anyway?

You need 16 minors to fail (and I believe 3 of the same minor gets upgraded so if you fail to check your mirrors three times it gets upgraded to a major) so she isn't giving you the entire truth here.

Nothing ridiculous about it; this is the average according to the DVSA's own figures, not something I concocted.

Indeed. I passed first time, after a mere 2 lessons and a hell of a lot of private practice and watching YouTube videos. But that is not a typical approach.

I passed my test on October after 12 months of lessons (not always 1 a week)
I had never driven around the area I took my test as my instructor pointed out that all I would learn would be how to drive on those specific roads.

all of the theory stuff I did online with practise questions and tests

I would have more of an issue with paying for 60 mins and only receiving 45 mins - did you never question this with the instructor or your daughter?

Serious and dangerous faults are both what people call majors and you will fail for either.

The distinction between the two is essentially whether there was actual real risk. So changing lanes without and mirror checks is a serious if no other road users were in danger, but a dangerous if they were.

The logic of your instructor is great in theory and is the DVSAs position. You don't need to drive on the roads in the test area, you need to learn to drive.

But I have always seen it as similar to saying you don't need to try past papers for an a-level if you have learned the subject adequately. Correct in theory, but in practice doing past papers helps, as does driving the roads you might encounter on test.

feel guilty for not realising sooner, the amount of times she would come home 15 mins before her lessons finished 😩

If she didn't notice this, I also don't think she should be driving! I dumped a driving instructor for being flaky with his time and found someone who actually gave me a full hour for the rate very early on. It's something you should have picked up early on... At least by the 2nd fail.

My instructor did this to me too. He absolutely took the piss and I was too nice to do anything about it. I wasted a lot of money and he was taking nice holidays in Jamaica with the money he was ripping students off for. He used to ‘take over’ the driving and get me to fill in his appointment diary for him 🙄

I stopped learning when I got married and he wasn’t happy when I said I could no longer afford the lessons.

A decade later I tried a new instructor and passed very quickly. I encountered old instructor when I went for my test and my new instructor said he’d never seen one of old instructor’s pupils ever pass. Sure enough, they failed.

My cousin who was born in Ireland had to take her test there and the examiner passed her. In England the examiner was not passing her. She was in her 40's when she learned and wasn't a young racer. They seem to set the bar high.

A personal theory... The DVLA should record pass and fails against a driving instructor to ensure that they are doing their job properly if a particular instructor is have a statistically unfeasible fail rate. The Driving examiner from my first test did say he was reporting my DI as he thought my performance was due to bad/dangerous teaching.

That would only work if driving instructors were randomly assigned, or instructors would never take on someone that has already failed. Or an older learner. And would lead to instructors unnecessarily recommending extra lessons to make sure their personal figure would be less likely to be affected.

They do record pass rates (amongst other stats) for instructors, and we can be recalled for standards checks if we are performing badly.

I’d be having words with the instructor to find out exactly what you’ve been paying her for. She’s robbing you blind. Why on earth would she not take your daughter around the test centre area? Especially if it’s local. I’d leave a review also so others don’t get robbed also.

If my DC had been returned 15 minutes early, the very first time I would have been out to the car having A Word.

It’s expensive enough without losing 25% of the time. So yes that’s on you - I wouldn’t expect a 17 year old to challenge the DI on this alone herself. They sound shit but it’s up to you to be proactive and challenge this.

And you should have been checking she knew the test route - were you taking her for practice runs? As soon as you realised on the first test that they hadn’t already done the route, I’d have been questioning this with the DI.

The minors to fail thing seems odd. Surely must be more to it than that?

That is exactly what has happened - at least with me. And in a sense is what the DVSA intended. I am a little more circumspect about who I will take to test, not massively so, but it definitely weighs in our minds. And because most instructors don't want to tell people they can't use their car for the test, they usually just drop the more awkward pupils halfway through the process - 'too busy', 'change of circumstances' etc. The DVSA will say this is a good thing - it drives up standards - I can see the logic, but not sure that I agree (but that discussion is a massive essay in its own right).

And if you think about it, if recommending people do more lessons means our pass rates improve, in theory it means people are on average better drivers when let out alone on the roads, so I'm not sure you can call them 'unnecessary'.

Also, I'm not sure why you think we wouldn't take on someone who had failed? Each test is recorded against the ADI badge number if available. A pupil's failures with other instructors doesn't get recorded against me. In fact quite the opposite - I generally like to take on people who have previously failed - they are usually an easy pass.

Is she also practising with you? Practising on possible tests runs near the test centre is vital. We had twins go through license last year - the examiners are tough. My daughter was the only person to pass in her group of 8 - and even she left the test centre in tears because the examiner still tore shreds off her even though she passed.

You don't fail a driving test on one minor fault, one major fault yes.
Please explain how not driving the area where the test centre is accounts for taking a corner too wide? A corner is a corner.
You have let the instructor take the piss though, 15 mins of an hour lesson is a quarter, why on earth has neither of you challenged this? Especially considering how much lessons are.

Arg - what is it with everyone thinking she failed for a single minor fault on the first test? That isn't what the OP says. It just says she got a minor fault for not knowing about the lights, not that it was the cause of the failure (it wasn't if it was only marked as a minor fault - it could have been a serious if searching for the lights led to a loss of control).

The failure reasons for tests 2 and 3 are mentioned, but not for the first test.