We operate an ALS (Accelerated Learning System) to ensure that you receive maximum value for your money, you learn the driving syllabus in the most practical way and are ready for test in the shortest time possible.

Further details can be accessed by clicking the Main Video on this page ‘Save Your Time And Your Money By Watching This Video’.

Our Driving Instructors have been trained to a very strict criteria and should they fall short on any aspect of the criteria listed below.

I will personally refund your lesson fee.

• If your instructor does not adopt a friendly approach – Your lesson fee refunded
• If you do not feel comfortable and at ease – Your lesson fee refunded
• If you don’t feel you received quality tuition – Your lesson fee refunded
• If you feel that your instructor did not show patience – Your lesson fee refunded
• If your instructor does not start the lesson with a recap of pervious learning – Your lesson fee refunded
• If your instructor does not discuss with you and agree a firm objective – Your lesson fee refunded
• If your instructor does not make it very clear how the risk will be shared – Your lesson fee refunded
• If your instructor does not discuss the lesson outcome and whether your objective has been met – Your lesson fee refunded
• If your instructor does not get you to sign the lesson sheet – Your lesson fee refunded

REFUND PROCEDURE:

• Call customer services within 24 hours of your lesson to explain your concerns over the service or the tuition that you received.
• Give the name of your driving instructor along with the lesson time and date.
• Explain the full details as to why you were not satisfied with either the service or the tuition you received.

I will sanction a full refund.

*Refunds do not apply to cancelled lessons or to lessons on test day. 

Our entire business is built on reputation and happy customers and your feedback will be used to improve our service and tuition going forward.

Regards, Kelvin.

Cost and Pricing:

Many learner students and their parents assume that all Driving Schools and Driving Instructors are the same! After all, they are qualified and trained to prepare you to pass your driving test, aren’t they? Well it may come as a surprise but not all Driving Instructors are qualified at all! It’s been a long-standing issue within the driving school industry that ‘trainee’ instructors are allowed by law to provide lessons at the same lesson rate as fully qualified instructors! Personally, I think this practice is very wrong and many Driving Schools do not mention this fact when students are booking their lessons. There are a couple of things you can do to find out if your allocated Instructor is fully qualified: 1. Ask at the time of booking and 2. Check their operating licence that should be in the front window of the tuition vehicle. A PINK licence indicates a trainee that is yet to pass their qualifying exam and a GREEN licence for a fully qualified Instructor.

Lest assume that your Instructor is fully qualified. Instructors vary enormously in the way they teach the syllabus and the quality of their teaching. They also vary in customer skills when it comes to their patients and friendliness. It is quite disturbing that around 30% of all learner drivers feel the need to change their driving instructor before reaching test standard because of incompatibility issues or the lack of student progress. Many Instructors work as sole operators and have no requirement for ongoing training. In fact, many independent Instructors never take any further training from the day that they qualified. Very few Driving Schools monitor their driving instructor’s performance and provide ongoing training to ensure they keep up to date with modern teaching methods.

Ever since I qualified myself over twenty years ago and started the Driving School, my approach has always been to provide outstanding value for money and customer rapport. As I started to grow the School, my main concern was how I could scale the School but still retain my own ethics. I was alarmed in the early days just how poor some of our early Instructor recruits were and the general standard of tuition being offered in the local area.

It was for this reason that we opened our own Instructor Training Academy during 2007. The only way I was able to guarantee that we only recruited the very best Instructors, was to teach and prepare them ourselves. All our Instructors now must come through our own Training Academy and take a comprehensive 80-hour course and qualify before they can teach any of our learner students.

As you can probably appreciate, the cost to prepare the very best Instructors is considerable and then we must pay them a suitable lesson fee to retain their services.

So how is this a benefit to you, the student? We operate a unique ALS (Accelerated Learning System) which as the name suggests, is in place to speed up your learning period and ensure you receive full value for your money. All our Instructors are trained on this system and we have quality control procedures in place to monitor the tuition you receive. You will also be provided with feedback forms on your Instructor, so you are able to mark them on their performance for all aspects of their interaction with you.

Your driving lessons will adhere to the DVSA’s client centred policy and will be interactive so you will have a big input to how they are conducted. This policy eliminates many frustrations that students encounter with large amounts of time parked at the kerbside and endless hours of aimless driving around with no firm lesson objective.

You can access full details of our unique  ALS system by watching the main video on this page – ‘Save your time and your money by watching this video’.

Hopefully, I have been able to enlighten you as to why driving lesson prices vary enormously and explain why Driving Instructors are not all the same. Purchasing what appear to be ‘cheap’ lessons and a good deal is tempting, especially when on a tight budget, but like most things in life, there is often a hidden cost to cheap and that is quite often a much longer learning period, frustration at the lack of progress and the expense of a failed test and having to take further lessons.

We operate a very simple pricing policy:

 Monday – Saturday:

Manual Lesson fees are £40.00 per hour with a minimum of two-hour lessons (£80.00)

Block Booking Discount when you purchase 10 Hours of -£20 (£380.00)

Automatic Lessons are £43.00 per hour with a minimum of two-hour lessons (£86.00)

Block Booking Discount when you purchase 10 Hours of -£20 (£410.00)

Sundays:

Manual Lesson fees are £50.00 per hour with a minimum of two-hour lessons (£100.00)

Automatic Lessons are £53.00 per hour with a minimum of two-hour lessons (£106.00)

* There are no discounts on Sunday lessons.

We suggest that if possible, you purchase a block of ten hours to benefit from the £20 discount. If for any reason you are not delighted with your instructor and your tuition, I will make a refund and any unused lessons purchased will also be refunded.

We operate a 48-hour pre-pay policy and your nominated instructor will contact you regarding payment via bank transfer.

PLEASE NOTE!

We do not take cash on the day of your lesson.

Lesson Booking Form

Unique Accelerated Learning System:

Hi, my name is Kelvin White and I am the owner here at Kelvin white Driving School.

If you can spare a few moments of your time, I will explain why our unique accelerated learning system can be a massive benefit to you.

It’s very disturbing that so many driving lessons lack any real structure, they involve aimless driving around with no agreed objective that can be measured leading to lack of progress and a huge amount of frustration and wasted money. Another poor practice is to not structure lessons in a sequence that will help you develop your knowledge and skill level by ensuring that your early lessons are conducted in an area with few distractions. Far too often, we hear from students that are asked to drive through town centres or deal with very busy roundabouts, when they have barely learnt the skills to move off safely and deal with simple junctions. This practice can be a disaster and lead to a massive lack of confidence, even leading to the termination of lessons in some cases.

The 1st time pass rate in our local area is below 50% and over 30% of all learner drivers feel the need to change their driving instructor during the learning process.  This is a very poor reflection on the standards of tuition currently being offered.

So, what exactly is the Unique Accelerated Learning System?

It’s a method of learning that is recommended by the governing body, the DVSA. It encourages interaction between Instructor and student to ensure the shortest learning time and therefore provide you with the maximum value for your money.

We have taken this process way above the basic recommendations.

1. We conduct all our driving lessons to comply with the DVSA’s recommended client centred learning procedure.
2. We have quality assurance measures in place to monitor the standard of tuition that our instructors provide.
3. We will offer you a lesson refund should you feel that our instructors have not followed the procedure and delivered the highest quality tuition.

So how does the ALS (Accelerated Learning System) work?

• Your Instructor will produce a new ALS lesson sheet for each lesson that you take.
• Your name, the date and the actual time your Instructor arrived for your lesson will be entered onto the ALS sheet.
• There will be an interactive discussion between you and your Instructor to decide what you wish to cover during the lesson. You may wish to revisit a topic from previous leaning for further practice or you may wish to tackle a new topic.
• Let’s say that you wish to revisit a previous topic. Your Instructor will discuss the reasons that you wish to revisit and address any concerns that you may have.
• He/she will then check that you have full understanding of the theory behind the topic, very important as much time can be wasted driving around without understanding the theory as this often leads to frustration and a lack of progress.
• You will then be asked what you wish to achieve by revisiting the topic. (For example: You wish to improve your confidence and emerging at roundabouts) A plan of action will then be documented by your Instructor and this will become the lesson objective. (you may have several objectives in the same lesson, especially during a two-hour lesson)
• Your Instructor will then devise a suitable route that will include several roundabouts in this case, so you will be able to practice your skills and work toward improving your confidence.
• There will be periodic stops to assess your progress and to address any concerns you may have. Your Instructor will encourage you to start taking more responsibility until you feel that you have achieved your objective
• If time allows, you will then repeat the process by choosing to revisit another topic or tackle a new one
• At the end of your lesson, there will be an interactive recap and summary to determine whether you achieved your objective(s) if not, feedback will be given as to why not and a suggestion made to revisit on a future lesson.
• You will be asked to sign the ALS Lesson sheet as a true reflection of events

This is the DVSA’s preferred policy for client centred learning as it is proven to provide maximum value for your money. We enhance the process even further by using our own unique ALS lesson sheets to ensure the lesson structure is maintained with documentation.

We also have a quality assurance monitoring process in place, and you will receive a feedback form in the post approx. three weeks after you commence your lessons, where you will be able to give feedback on your Instructors performance.

In addition, we also guarantee every single lesson and unless you are completely satisfied that your Instructor gave you full value for money, I will personally refund your lesson fee.

You access full details on our 9 Star Guarantee at the top of this website.

Thank you for your time and safe driving.

Are we the right Driving School for you?

We do not attempt to teach every person that wants to lean to drive and we may not be the right Driving School for you?

With over twenty years of experience and one of the highest pass rates in the area, we find that taking a 2-hour lesson every week, proves to be the most successful strategy for most students. Two-hour lessons would be far more beneficial to you and you will learn far more for your money and you will also be test ready in half the time. You will have a decent amount of condensed learning in one go with time to digest and be focused for your next lesson. Sometimes students think that they would be unable to concentrate for a period of two hours, but this is why we would ‘chunk’ your lessons and break up the two hour slot to cover several topics, just as they do in the school curriculum to keep the learning fresh and focused.

Now you may be thinking of taking 1-hour lessons and Just to be clear and give you a balanced view, there is nothing wrong with 1-hour lessons, we just feel that they offer less value for your money as they prolong the learning period substantially. Another of the drawbacks is having to take time from your lesson to drive to a suitable location that is relevant to cover the topic and then having to drive back again. So, should you prefer to take less than two-hour lessons, We would not be the right driving school for you as we don’t offer them.

The opposite of taking 1-hour lessons, is to consider an intensive or ‘crash’ course.

Many of the enquiries that we receive asking about intensive courses are from students that have yet to take and pass their Theory Test. Should this be the case, you would normally be a waiting for around eight weeks for a practical test from the time you pass your Theory Test. Now should you be looking to take a week off school or work and condense your lessons, this could work for you if you were able to schedule your intensive course a few weeks before your practical test. Taking an intensive course and then having to wait more than a few weeks before taking your practical test could mean you find yourself getting rusty while you are waiting. The other thing to consider is that you may be purchasing more lessons than you require and therefore spending more money than is necessary, or booking less lessons that you need and arriving on test day underprepared and run the risk of having to rebook another test and having the frustration of waiting a few months for your next test. Again, If you prefer to take an intensive course, we would not be the right Driving School for you as we do not offer them.

 Finally, our learner students take regular lessons each week, booked well in advance if possible as this provides the continuity and accelerates the learning period. We sometimes have requests to provide a lesson every other week because of affordability issues, but this is not something we can offer. While we completely understand that your finances may be tight and that is all you can afford, but this practice is detrimental to your learning. You would lack the continuity required and your learning period would be extended considerably and therefore we would not be providing the best value for money and it would go against our principles.

Your Customer Journey:

The fact that you are taking the time to explore our ‘You Ask, We Answer’ section would suggest that you are considering our services as your training provider. Let me take a few minutes of your time to explain exactly what happens when you book your driving lessons with us.

It starts with your visit to our website. You spend some time to explore and digest the information we make available. You then decide to contact us through your preferred method which could be by phone if you would like to speak to Andy or Sandra in our customer services team. You may prefer to fill in a booking form to send us your requirements or use Facebook Messenger should you wish to have immediate online engagement. You could even send a simple Email if you prefer.

Whatever method you choose, Andy or Sandra will take time to understand your requirements and suggest a solution if possible. If they can help you and you decide to make a booking, you will be allocated a suitable instructor to match your requirements and the booking will be confirmed in the Instructors diary. They will then request your preferred method of making payment. We offer payment over the phone by card, bank transfer or we can send you a payment link by Email. You can also make an online payment through the shop facility on this website. We operate a 48-hour pre-pay policy but if it’s not possible for you to make payment at the time of booking, they can arrange a day and time when it would be convenient.

Once the booking has been confirmed, your details will be sent to your Instructor. You will receive a letter in the post confirming the day, the time and the agreed pick up location for your 1^st lesson. Your Instructor will arrive at the agreed time and introduce him/herself. If you are new to driving, your Instructor will drive you to a suitable location to get you started. It’s vital that your first few lessons are conducted in an area that will ensure your success and build your confidence. If you are not a beginner and you have done some driving before, your Instructor will discuss with you whether you would feel confident of driving from the pick-up location.

Your lessons will then be conducted using our unique Accelerated Learning System and you will arrange with your Instructor for ongoing lessons. Around three weeks after you commence with your lessons, you will receive a letter in the post that will contain a feedback form where you can evaluate your Instructor’s performance and send back to us if you wish.

 Your Instructor will continue to cover the driving syllabus, improve your knowledge, skills and most importantly build your confidence as you move closer to your practical driving test.

Once test day arrives, both you and your Instructor will be ready for that 1^st time pass. Your Instructor will ask your permission to take a photo so we can post on our Facebook page and website to announce and celebrate your test success. The final step will be to request a customer review from you where you can give an account of your learning experience with us here at Kelvin White Driving School.