Or what most people are saying when they mean ‘coaching’ these days.

Note: This is an old article from 2012. DSA is now DVSA.

The recent announcement that CPD wasn’t going to be compulsory (for the foreseeable future, anyway) threw the current crop of nouveau-spammers into disarray. No longer could they send out almost daily emails offering their latest miracle ‘coaching’ course as the only way to possibly avoid being stricken from the Register and thrown into a foreign hellhole prison somewhere. Suddenly, their cash flow projections looked at risk – after all, not all ADIs are so stupid that they will keep paying £200 for a course that isn’t absolutely necessary.

Some are, of course. Or they’re just not very good at what they do and are desperately trying to pay their way to superstardom in much the same way they were persuaded to become ADIs in the first place so they could earn £30,000 a year working a couple of hours day, a couple of weekdays each week.

Anyway, there has been a noticeable shift over the last couple of months. The nouveau-spammers are now offering ‘client-centred learning’ (CCL) courses instead as though nothing has changed. They’ve made this shift in much the same way that the enemy was switched seamlessly between Eastasia and Eurasia in George Orwell’s 1984. I think it was described as ‘a lunatic dislocation of the mind’ in that novel to explain how it was possible for people to accept such a fabricated change of facts blindly and without question, and to actually believe it.

Client-centred learning – CCL – is the term DSA is using to describe it’s preferred approach to training styles following the two-year Learning To Drive (LTD) study. There is a distinction – DSA points out that coaching can mean quite a lot of different things, including CCL.

As a result of the LTD trial a new syllabus has been put together incorporating a number of scenarios – to be precise, 23 scenarios are included. DSA has pointed out that CCL is not a replacement for current methods. It is a new tool to be used when appropriate.

This is clearly at odds with what the nouveau-spammers have been trying to tell people over the last few years in their numerous emails, and on test centre waiting room posters. If you’d have listened to them you’d have thought that every instructor was going to have to start their careers again from scratch (across the forums, that was clearly what people were coming away understanding). Those who had actually wasted money on attending one or more of these courses frequently fuelled the fire making comments they couldn’t substantiate using what they’d apparently ‘learned’.

The new DSA syllabus deals exclusively with the ‘higher levels’ (often referred to as levels 3 & 4) of the GDE Matrix. These are the ones labelled as Goals And Context, and Goals For Life, which I discussed initially well over 2 years ago.

When the LTD trial began the suggestion was that when it was complete it would have to become part of every ADI’s training package going forward. More than two years down the line this is no longer the case. DSA has stated that check test examiners have been trained to asses on both CCL and non-CCL skills and so an ADI who does things the way they have always done them will not be penalised. There are no plans to make it in any way compulsory for existing ADIs.

CCL will be part of the training for new ADIs (while they are PDIs), though. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that CCL will not be mandatory until all existing ADIs on the Register have retired. By that time, it will just be part of the training, and no one who fancies themselves as a modern-day Wat Tyler in opposing the evil DSA will have anything to fuss about.

Personally, I’d much rather see it become mandatory for existing ADIs. That’s because the LTD trial set out to fix the problem of new, young drivers killing themselves, pinning some of the responsibility on some ADIs who just taught people to pass the test. It cannot possibly achieve any of that if the same ADIs are still teaching the way they always have.

As I have said before on more than one occasion, many instructors are already using CCL techniques. The big problem is that many are not – and the reasons for that are very complex, ranging from just not being cut out for the job up to offering stupidly cheap lesson prices and so not being able to afford to teach people properly.

Unless CCL as it applies to the LTD syllabus are applied across the board then nothing can change. And any such move would be opposed by all the Wat Tylers out there through their ‘local groups’. DSA has chosen the easy way out, I think.

Footnote: Undoubtedly there will be quite a few out there who will resent anyone but them stating what DSA is or isn’t going to do. The information here was obtained from me personally attending a course run by DSA concerning the new syllabus and CCL. It is current and accurate  – not old or twisted – information.