About Jennifer's Driving School

I started Jennifer’s Driving School in 2007. While training to be a driving instructor I worked as a support worker / key worker, caring for elderly people and people with learning difficulties. I very much enjoyed that job and still help out some of my old clients today.

The skills I learnt as a carer were very helpful when I passed all of my qualifying exams and became a driving instructor. You certainly need empathy, kindness and a ‘likeability factor’ to be a successful and popular instructor!

At first I was nervous; I felt guilty that I although I was trained and had passed my exams with flying colours, I didn’t have much experience. I used to do lessons practically for free! But my confidence soon grew as I got great results and it was a wonderful feeling when I began to see my students pass their tests first time with just a few minor faults (some none at all!) and go on to become safe and confident drivers. I still see my old pupils from years ago driving along and giving me a wave! I often get friends and family of old pupils contact me asking for lessons.

I lived in Ringwood at the time and found I was getting so many recommendations that I was getting rather booked up. I was having to turn people away as I didn’t have the time to fit everyone in. It was then that I realised I could possibly take on another instructor who could help me out with the pupils that I couldn’t fit in. Funnily enough, around that time I was contacted by an instructor who was moving to the area and asked if I had any work available. I anxiously met up with him, still a bit wary about having someone else representing my name.

I remembered when I Iearnt to drive, I went with a big national driving school. The first instructor I had was quite aggressive in his manner, tutting and mumbling under his breath. I was very anxious before and after each lesson! Then I asked to change and was given an instructor who was very quiet, he just directed me where to go each lesson and didn’t really say anything else, I had no feedback positive or negative and had no idea if I was doing things correctly. I really didn’t want people like that representing me!

Luckily Steve was lovely and a real natural, I just knew that he’d make pupils feel at ease like I tried to and be friendly and patient with them, just like I promoted about myself. He worked for me for about 5 years until moving up north where he is still happily teaching.

I like to think I am a good judge of character and over the years have had a few instructors wanting to work for me who, although probably great instructors, not quite up to my standards in terms of good people skills! So I let them go and work for other schools whilst I maintained my good reputation by only considering kind, honest and good-hearted instructors who wouldn’t let not only their pupils down but also me and my reputation.

I only keep a small team of instructors, even though I do get contacted by others frequently who are looking for work. I am very happy with all of my instructors and if I took someone else on it would be someone very carefully chosen. I’m not greedy and I always put my reputation as a good driving school before making money. I also like to make sure I have enough work for my instructors, after all they have bills to pay so there’s no use in me taking on more and more instructors but not having enough work to go around (like some other schools which I won’t mention seem to do!).

So that’s my story! I have great reviews from ex-pupils and pupils who get consistently low or zero minor faults which is just brilliant. All of my team are not only professional instructors but nice people as well! They all have high pass rates and are all fully qualified and high grade instructors (I don’t have any trainees).

Thanks for reading (if you’re not asleep by now!),

Jennifer.