Elite's Guide to Choosing a Driving Instructor Unless you know an instructor or have been recommended one by a friend or relative, choosing a good instructor needs some care. To help you, here are a few tips you might want to think about and some questions you might want to ask.
1) AVAILABILITY. Establish that the instructor covers the area in which you live and that he is available to give lessons at times that you need (day time, evenings or weekends?). At Elite we try to be as flexible as we can for our clients. We cover the Medway area, but we do not work on Sundays. Our wives would divorce us!!!
2) EXPERIENCE Find out how long he/she has been an instructor. There is no short cut to experience. An experienced instructor will have gained considerable knowledge regarding the needs of individual clients and of local traffic conditions. Experience will enable the instructor to adapt lessons to fit with the different needs of his/her clients. Elite's instructors have combined experience of over 50 years.
3) QUALIFICATIONS. Law requires driving instructors, to pass three exams in order to qualify as an ADI (approved driving instructor). However once the first two exams have been passed the person can trade as a PDI (potential driving instructor) for up to 6 months, in which time he/she is required to pass the final exam to become an ADI. The trouble is that the final exam has a very high failure rate (it is really difficult) this means that you may start to learn with a PDI who might never qualify as a full ADI. How do you tell the difference between an ADI (fully qualified) and a PDI (only part qualified)? A fully qualified ADI will have a green ID badge in the front windscreen of his/her car. A PDI will have a pink ID badge. At Elite all of our instructors are fully qualified. If we did ever employ a PDI we would ask you if you would mind learning with him/her and your lesson price would be reduced as a result.
4) PRICE AND DURATION OF LESSONS. Whilst price is an important factor you might want to ask yourself whether just going for the cheapest price is the best policy. It might not be. Remember if you pay peanuts you might get a monkey!! On the other hand you can't assume that the most expensive will be the best. It might not be. Price alone is not very reliable in predicting how good an instructor might be. At Elite we believe that our fees are reasonable and represent good value for money.