This is an old post and the ideas discussed never came to anything.
One of the possible changes to the driving test, mooted a while back and exhumed periodically, was that instructors might be allowed to sign off their own pupils for competence in the manoeuvres. I commented briefly on the idea back in 2009 when it was last aired. I should also point out that it is fortunately unlikely to ever happen.
I have never thought that it would be a good idea. But I have always though that it would be suicidal to let ADIs have a direct say in the outcome of a driving test other than through the normal training they provide, and doubly so if they could do it without anyone seeing what they were up to.
Pass Plus is a perfect example of my concerns. It is a post-test course which was intended to provide additional training and experience to new drivers after they acquired their licences. It’s content already acknowledged that many newly-qualified drivers may never have driven on rural roads, or at night, or in bad weather, or even on fast dual carriageways. Even at this stage of the discussion you have to wonder how so many learners manage to go through the entire learning process without encountering at least some of those things, but they do.
With hindsight, Pass Plus made a few mistakes. It simply didn’t allow for stupidity, greed, and dishonesty – traits which are far more widespread than many would like to believe – and ended up by:
- offering reduced Insurance
- allowing any ADI to register to deliver it
- allowing ADIs to sign it off
- allowing any module to be carried out in theory rather than practice
Reduced insurance became the only reason for 95% or more of candidates to do the course in the first place. Allowing all ADIs to sign it off (there are around 45,000 of them, remember) introduced the possibility of fraud. And allowing modules to be completed in theory merely made such fraud more likely.
T
he Pass Plus course brief makes it clear that any training must be done after the driving test. You cannot use what you covered with pupils on learner lessons as Pass Plus material. And yet you see instructors openly admitting to doing precisely this, presumably because they just don’t understand the instructions (or haven’t read them). There are even more examples of candidates revealing the same thing (usually by implying some clandestine agreement), and in those cases one can presume that whoever signed the course as being complete knew exactly what they were doing. After all, Pass Plus – if done properly – requires many more miles of driving per session than most instructors’ lessons would.
The Pass Plus brief also clearly says that all modules must be delivered as practical sessions wherever possible. Realistically, for most instructors this means the bad weather module is the one most likely to be covered theoretically, since one cannot guarantee bad weather. But again, you see instructors openly arguing that they don’t live near a motorway or fast dual carriageway, or that they don’t work nights. As a result, they end up covering around half of the course in theory only – and even then, I doubt very much that they spend the equivalent number of hours talking “in the classroom”, as they like to call it. The Pass Plus course has to last a minimum of 6 hours, so even if you had to catch two ferries to get to a motorway on the mainland it would still be technically possible in 99% of cases. As for not working evenings… well, you really shouldn’t be offering Pass Plus if you’re that half-hearted about your responsibilities.
I remember once seeing someone write that the nearest motorway was “over half an hour away”, and this was why they covered it in theory only. Well, I live quite close to the M1 – and it would take me h
alf an hour to get to it with most pupils. The motorway module on the course is by far the most important one for most candidates. I don’t consider it to be “inaccessible”.
At the extreme end of the spectrum there are even people who sign off Pass Plus without doing any training at all. They pocket the money in exchange for a signature or two – and it would appear that those signatures are sometimes not even on official Pass Plus stationery, but on photocopies of it (another topic you see being discussed from time to time), thus avoiding paying for Pass Plus refill packs.
I’m sure the majority of instructors deliver Pass Plus correctly. However, those who don’t have effectively destroyed the validity of the course which – if done properly – is extremely useful to new drivers.
So I was interested to read an article from an Australian driving instructor (link now dead) about the testing system over there. I have obtained his permission to link to his website article.
Until March this year, it seems, Australian driving instructors (in the Northern Territory) were allowed to sign off pupils for driving licences. This has been stopped, and everyone now has to take a proper driving test. The instructor says that he is glad and explains why.
He received frequent calls from people saying that friends had taken lessons and got the required certificate “after 3 hours” with another instructor, so could he do the same.
He explains that the mechanism for delivering certificated courses under the Australian Quality Framework is merely paperwork-based and does not assess how people in the field actually perform. He gives an example of how trainers with skills in one discipline would be asked to deliver training in another.
He cites another example of how an organisation delivering driving courses produced training packages that said everyone would be ready to be signed off after only 8 hours practical tuition.
He says that some instructors took to the idea like ducks to water, and cars started appearing saying “NOW WE TEST YOU”.
He mentions a case he knew of where an instructor completed the written part of the test for a candidate and simply got him to sign it, and he also suggests that such dishonesty is not confined to this one incident.
He gives other examples of people be signed off after doing even fewer hours of practical training. He says that some schools specialised in “get a licence quick” programmes, whereas he and one of his colleagues were only prepared to sign off a maximum of five candidates in a one year period (i.e. the standards of driving were extremely low, so if what he was seeing were typical of drivers, how could anyone else sign them off more quickly without some compromise?)
His article is definitely worth a read. It could almost be a prediction of what would happen in the UK if such a great responsibility were ever passed to ADIs.
But to be honest, I think the authorities over here know that – which is why, as I said at the start, it will never happen.