Big brother IS listening

The DITC and The Instructor Podcast had a very positive and exciting email this week which we are keen to share!

Some of you may have listened to Terry & Chris analysing the “Ready to Pass“ campaign from the DVSA. this followed some other positive involvement from the DVSA Assistant Chief Examiner Graham O‘Brien - an episode I would definitely recommend listening to, even if you are not a podcast fan!

Apparently the DVSA are fans of the podcast! Having listened to what we had to say, they immediately made some changes and sent Chris the following email, which we want to share with our valued members:

 Hi Chris

I hope that you're well.

I'm working on DVSA's 'Ready to Pass?' campaign. The team working on it has listened to The Instructor podcast’s latest episode where you discussed the campaign with Terry Cook.

I wanted to start by saying a huge thank you for talking about the campaign on the podcast with Terry. Every mention of the campaign helps. I’m also very grateful for the work that DITC has done in sharing and promoting the campaign across your social media channels.

Most importantly, I wanted to say thank you for the constructive way you discussed the campaign with Terry and raised concerns with some of the wording of part of the campaign website.

I know I speak on behalf of the whole team working on the campaign when I say that our top priority is to make sure the campaign supports ADIs and makes the conversations you have with pupils easier - not harder. We want you to know that we've got your back if you're not agreeing with a pupil about how ready they are.

That's why I'm really happy to say that we've made some immediate changes to the wording on the website to try and better do this. Here's a summary of some of the things we've changed.

Help and prompts from your driving instructor
We've changed the wording from 'You do not need help or prompts from your driving instructor' to 'You do not need prompts from your driving instructor' to better reflect that ADIs can and still will be of help.

We're going to look at how we can improve the test result email that we send for a pass to help reinforce that the ADI can still help after passing the test.

You do not make silly mistakes when you're driving.
We've kept the headline wording of this part the same, but we've changed the expanded text below it to say:

If you’re making silly mistakes that are dangerous or potentially dangerous during your driving lessons, you’re not ready to pass your driving test and drive on your own.

The reason we've described this as 'silly mistakes' is because our research with learners who have failed the test most often describe these as 'silly mistakes'. We want to use the same language that they're using to help connect with them. But we also want them to understand that if something is dangerous or potentially dangerous, then it's not actually 'silly' - it's serious.

You pass every mock driving test you do.

We've changed the wording to say 'You pass mock driving tests' to make it clearer that if someone has failed one, it does not mean that they'll never be ready to take the test.

Your driving instructor says you're ready

We've changed the wording here to say 'Your driving instructor agrees that you're ready' to help make it clearer that this should be a discussion between the instructor and their pupil.

I want to reassure you that we’ll continue to improve the wording as we learn more about what’s working well and what’s not working as we’d hoped. I hope that you’ll continue to provide friendly and constructive challenge on that.

Photography used on the campaign website

I completely appreciate the comments about the diversity in the photos on the campaign website.

We've launched with photos we had in our existing photo library, where we have the necessary consent in place.

However, we're constantly updating our photo library and want it to represent the diversity of the communities we serve. As soon as we have newer photos, we'll update the campaign site.

Explaining our thinking

In the next week or so we'll be publishing a blog post on Despatch to explain more of the insight that we've used to help us design the campaign. This will explain more about:

why we called the campaign 'Ready to Pass?'
why we're including pass rates and waiting times in the emails being sent to learner drivers
how we're monitoring and evaluating the campaign

Again, I’d like to thank you for promoting the campaign, and the helpful and constructive way you discussed it with Terry. I’ve written to Terry separately to also pass on my thanks.

Best wishes

Abigail Britten | Head of Recovery Communications “

Communication with Abigail and her team is very much open, and we look forward to working with them on this and other projects in the future. As the DITC we are keen to continue both supporting and challenging the DVSA, and welcome any feedback or input that our members have.

We would also very much like to thank Terry and the Instructor Podcast for their continued support in what has become a valued partnership.