When you’re wanting to learn to drive it can be a daunting task to find the best driving school for you. If you don’t have any friends who can make a recommendation then there will always be the worry that you end up saddled with an instructor who you don’t like.
Here are some useful tips to help you choose the best driving school.
- Check out their website
In this day and age, any reputable business is going to have a website to help them to market their business and also to offer information to prospective customers. Now their website is not necessarily going to tell you everything you want to know but at least it will help you a bit. First of all there may be a picture of the instructor and the driving school vehicle. This will help you to assess whether this looks like the right instructor for you. Ideally the instructor will be smart and well presented. However someone who looks too “officious” may be off putting. Similarly is the car clean, well presented and fairly new?
The website may also give you other information such as the driving instructors pass rate, ADI grade and any extra qualifications that the instructor has taken to help him or her to grow in the knowledge and understanding of driver training.
- Phone them up
Many people feel intimidated by calling up a driving school. However if you make sure you are prepared with the questions that you want to ask then this can be a valuable exercise. Of course the driving instructor will not be able to answer your call during the middle of a driving lessons so be prepared to leave a message so that the instructor can call you back.
Things you could ask are how long they have been an instructor, whether they are fully qualified, what their grade is and their pass rate. Be aware that not all instructors keep a record of their test pass rate and like all statistics they are always open to interpretation!
- Driving Lesson Prices
The cost of driving lessons is probably one of the least important factors in helping to choose a good driving school although it is the one that many people make their choice on. It is most unlikely that the cheapest Driving Schools 4 U are going to offer the best value for money. If they were good they would probably be charging more. By the same token the most expensive is not necessarily going to be the best. So choosing based on price is not a good idea!
- Recommendation and Reviews
The best way to choose is to get recommendations from your friends. Failing that, many driving schools will have a Facebook page where they post details of their successful pupils and testimonials. If other people are happy then there is a good chance that you will be.