Driving instructor grades were designed to show how good a driving instructor is.
The way the grades are awarded is not very good though, resulting in many pupils and instructors not taking much notice of them.
Let’s look at how you get these grades and what the problems with them are.
What are driving instructor grades?
Every two to four years, a driving instructor has to give a 45-minute long driving lesson with an examiner sitting in the back of the car marking them.
This is called a standards check.
The examiner gives the instructor a grade of A, B or Fail with grade A being the best.
That all sounds good so what’s wrong with these grades?
The two biggest problems with driving instructor grades
The first problem with grades is that they can be years out of date.
If you get a grade B your next standards check should be two years away and if you get a grade A it’s four years away. The idea is that better instructors who get a grade A don’t need checking as regularly.
This doesn’t usually happen though due to massive backlogs from 2020 and a shortage of staff.
It’s common for driving instructors to wait six to ten years between standards checks. That means a grade may only show how well the instructor did on a 45-minute lesson eight years ago!
Is that an accurate representation of how they’re performing today?
The DVSA invites instructors to take a standards check so it’s not possible to get one by asking. Even if you email them and say your grade is years out of date they say you just have to wait.
The second biggest gripe instructors and pupils have with grades is that the examiner giving them has in many cases never been a driving instructor. That’s right – the person grading you and deciding if you keep your job or not has never even done the job!
I emailed the DVSA about this and they replied that all examiners doing standards checks attend a short course run by a psychologist (who has also never been a driving instructor).
Many driving instructors agree that someone who has never done the job telling someone with 20+ years of experience what they’re doing wrong is like walking into a kitchen and telling a Michelin-star chef he’s rubbish when you can’t even boil an egg.
More things to consider about ADI grades
Here are some more points for you to consider before choosing a driving instructor based on their grade:
- Grades only shows one person’s opinion of how you taught someone to drive. If two examiners assessed you giving a lesson you could get a grade A from one and a grade B from the other so where does that leave you?
- There is a tremendous amount of pressure on instructors on these tests. If we mess up we lose our jobs. Can you imagine what it would be like taking a driving test under those conditions? It’s nothing like a normal lesson!
- You can only be given a grade of A or B, unless you fail and are given an F. There is not much difference between an A or B. I’d like to see it done from A to F to show a wider range of abilities, or marked 1-6 as the older version of the test (a check test) was.
- The result can depend a lot on your pupil. Many instructors got a grade A because they took a naturally talented pupil who they’d rehearsed the lesson with beforehand. Does a staged lesson like that show how good an instructor is?
- Bad instructors hide behind good grades while great instructors don’t care what grade they have. Anyone can go out of their way to get an A and then be rubbish for years. A truly great instructor teaching well all the time and doesn’t care about being a grade A or B.
Learn more about driving instructor grades
You can watch instructors doing mock standards checks with me and you’ll see what instructors have to go through.
You can visit my YouTube channel for more videos about everything to do with learning to drive.