MONEY FOR COLD HOPE?

Professor Peter Russell looks at the increasingly immoral practice of taking money to train PDIs without a 'snowball's chance in hell' of passing their qualifying exams, and offers a controversial solution to the problem

The proportion of successful ADI examination candidates over the total of applicants still remains one of the more disgraceful statistics of the industry. It is easy to determine the number of initial applicants from the number of application packs sold by the DSA each year. If this is compared with the number of new ADIs who get through their Part Three and then their first ADI check test successfully the total is well under five percent. Fewer than five out of every hundred starters manage to make it to the end.

Green Shield Stamp Syndrome

This particular article is not aimed at crucifying those training establishments who are in the business of recruiting potential instructors purely to make money. Greed is not a business sin, simply a moral one. Naturally, we must accept that any commercial training system must be based on sound business lines. However, PDI training becomes immoral when it depends on what is known as the 'Green Shield Stamp syndrome'. Green Shield Stamps were successful, not because they encouraged people to buy goods in proportion to the sales value; they made money because so many receivers of Green Shield Stamps never cashed them in.

In a similar fashion some instructor training schools rely on trainees paying up front for their training and then being forced to give up when they fail at their Part 1 or Part 2 exams.

However those ADI trainers who would like to make a more selective choice of those they teach could well look to some of the research that has been carried out over the years with regard to vocational drivers. One such experiment, and one I followed assiduously, was set up by London Transport which found it was having far too many failures in bus driver training courses.

On the buses

Let me set the scene. For many years now the possession of a PSV or PCV licence has enabled holders to move into the relatively lucrative market of coach driving. Some worked on their local bus companies and did weekend and overnight coach trips to increase their income. Others passed their PCV licence and almost immediately left their bus 'day' job to concentrate solely on the holiday coach market. This often created a problem for bus companies.

London Transport bus driver trainers found themselves slightly overwhelmed by hundreds of potential trainees; and they did not have any means of assessing their potential in passing the PCV test, or even if they were likely to stay with LT after they had passed. One spur for action was an appalling failure rate of about 75% - even worse than the L driving instructor market. As a means of keeping staff who passed, they invoked a contract that required anyone who passed to pay back their training fee if they left LT for any reason within 12 months. But they still did not know how to assess the pass potential of prospective drivers. So they called in the psychologists.

Professor Ivan Brown, of the Applied Psychology Unit at the Medical Research Centre, Cambridge, applied the idea of parallel thinking to a very practical problem. Professor Brown was told that it was not possible to use basic driving performance during training as a basis for weeding out potential failures, because there were no obvious differences in performance between those who subsequently failed or passed the PCV test.

Brown's eventual solution to the problem was to arrange a series of non-driving tasks for each new driver. The trainers were required to read out a set of eight digits every few seconds while the recruits were actually carrying out genuine driving tasks. They were driving off-road, for safety reasons, so that normal vehicle control and mechanical tasks were required but external risks were minimised.

Each set of digits was the same as the immediately preceding set except for one digit, and the driver's task was to 'spot the difference'. Naturally, all safety rules were obeyed and the tests were carried out whilst driving in a controlled situation. Nevertheless, drivers were required to maintain full control over the vehicle and the very limited road situation. It was discovered that those trainees who later passed the PCV test performed this digit identification task twice as well as those who did not pass.

What Ivan Brown identified was that those trainees who were unsuccessful needed to put much more effort and attention into the simple driving task than those who were later able to pass the test easily. Those who were unable to cope with the additional demands of thinking of something else, whilst driving on auto-pilot were unlikely to make good bus drivers.

This is not a perfect match for driving instructors of course. Anyone in the business of instructor training must carry out many more selection procedures before even getting to this practical stage of vetting. Unfortunately there are so many organisations ­ even reputably named ones ­ who will seriously argue that if someone wants to become a professional driving instructor then they are simply filling a gap in the market place. If they don't do it, then someone else will.

From a business point of view, this is fine. Where the moral issue falls down, however, is where trainers accept money for courses which they know will never be completed. Regrettably, there is a distinct lack of honesty throughout the instructor training industry which can lead to charges of taking money under false pretences in most cases; verging on fraud in others.

Over the years, many driving school owners with their own ADI trainers who trained their replacement staff have given up this because they are offered partially trained instructors ad nauseum. In fact there is now a considerable business which enables driving schools to purchase licensed trainees from the training establishment for considerable sums. The new 'owners' are content because they can tie in their new staff with high franchise fees. The training establishments make money both from their client and the new franchisors who soon recover their investment in trainees' fees.

There are two losers in this system. First of all, those PDIs who have scraped through two relatively simple examinations but who will never pass their final teaching examination. However, the real losers are those members of the public who have paid for driving lessons from trainee instructors who cannot teach; oh, and the overall cause of road safety of course!

Whilst it would be too altruistic to suggest that all ADI training establishments should refuse to accept for training those who will obviously never succeed, there is no moral reason why money paid for training unable to be continued should not be refunded.

Perhaps someone would like to put an argument against that?

Practical Solutions

However, for those readers who would like to apply this system of vetting potential instructors by giving them dual tasks to perform, I can offer the following practical suggestion.

Those who are skilled in one physical activity (such as typing, skiing, driving or piano playing) can readily combine it with another activity needing less attention. Skilful practitioners can carry out a major and a minor task both at the same time. Less skilful operators will usually lose control of one or other of the two tasks when under stress. (Awful operators may lose partial control of both!)

Most drivers are quite capable of having a conversation whilst at the wheel. However, those who are not fully competent will almost certainly not pass a selection test, during which they are required to drive the car and give some form of commentary at the same time. Trainers should be looking for attentional capacity as a means of identifying realistic future instructors.

The ability to instruct requires a number of parallel skills; giving directions, offering advice, making positive learning comments; evaluating progress; and controlling approaching situations. Sometimes all these parts of teaching are needed within overlapping time-scales. The skill here is to prioritise and, if necessary, adjust the tone of voice to confirm which action ­ direction, comment and criticism ­ is being given. All good trainers will easily devise their own range of distractor tests.

Perhaps if all ADI trainers were to do this, there would be a greater pass rate of ADI examinations and far fewer calls from SE ADI examiners for grade one, two or three re-tests after check tests. You know who they are immediately you meet them; so do Supervising Examiners. So do those who train potential ADIs for a business. What a pity so many trainers allow greed to blind their vision of fair play.

There is a simple solution which has never been tried by the DSA although I have advocated it for more than 40 years and that is to recruit PDIs the same way that examiners are recruited. All ADI candidates must pass their driving test first. Any PDI who cannot drive well enough should never be accepted for training ­ or waste their money on useless training.

If ORDIT cannot control these blights on the industry, perhaps ORDIT itself should be controlled instead? Would the DSA dare to do it, or do they need the money from wasted ADI Part One theory tests too much?