What Should an ADI Part 3 Trainer Actually Help You Improve?

Your ADI Part 3 trainer should be helping you develop as an educator, not just teaching you how to get through the Part 3 test.

Obviously the test matters. You need to understand what you're being assessed against and be prepared for it.

But you're training to become a driving instructor, not just preparing to deliver one 45-minute lesson while an examiner sits in the back.

Your training should look beyond Part 3.

Where should Part 3 training start?

With where you are now.

What experience do you already have? What do you understand? What are you less sure about? Your trainer should be able to observe what you're doing, listen to you and help you understand where your development needs to go next.

That might take your training in a completely different direction to somebody else's.

You could need more work around planning and adapting lessons, managing risk, giving feedback or supporting a learner to think things through for themselves.

Sometimes what comes up won't really be a Part 3 problem at all.

You might need to revisit some Part 1 knowledge. There might be something within your own driving that would benefit from going back towards Part 2 for a while.

That's fine.

You're trying to develop as an educator. If there's a gap somewhere underneath what you're trying to teach, deal with the gap rather than trying to work around it.

What should I actually be learning for ADI Part 3?

You need to understand the Part 3 competencies. They're what you're going to be assessed against, so pretending the test doesn't matter would be ridiculous.

But understanding the marking sheet isn't the same as understanding how to teach.

The National Standard for Driver and Rider Training is worth spending some time with because it gives much more context to what you're trying to develop. ADI 1 can also help you understand the assessment and how the competencies are looked at.

Read the National Standard for Driver and Rider Training on GOV.UK.

Read the ADI 1 examiner guidance on GOV.UK.

Then there are things such as the GDE Matrix which can help you think beyond the physical skills involved in driving and look more widely at the person you're working with.

You don't need to sit there memorising documents.

They should help you make more sense of what you're seeing in lessons and the decisions you're making.

What should Part 3 training look like?

There isn't one correct way of doing it.

Lesson observations can be useful because your trainer gets to see you working with a real learner. Role play can be useful too. It gives you an opportunity to explore something without waiting for exactly the right situation to appear during a live lesson.

Some development might happen online. Some of it might be a conversation. You might go away and research something, try an idea with a learner and then come back to it afterwards.

It depends what you need.

Your training should be responsive enough to change when something else becomes more important.

Should Part 3 training be client-centred?

I think you should be experiencing client-centred learning during your own training, not just being told what it means.

If we're expecting you to work collaboratively with learners, listen to them, support them and adapt to what they need, it makes sense for you to experience that approach yourself.

Your trainer has knowledge and experience to bring to the relationship. You bring your own experience, questions, strengths and gaps.

That's where the training starts.

It shouldn't just be someone telling you what to do next.

Should my Part 3 trainer give me a script?

I'd be very cautious if your training starts becoming a script or a box-ticking exercise.

There aren't magic questions that suddenly make a lesson client-centred.

Real learners don't follow scripts either.

Something might work brilliantly with one learner and get you absolutely nowhere with another. You need to be able to listen, observe what's happening and adapt.

That takes more than learning the "right" questions to ask at particular points in a lesson.

Sometimes you'll need information from your trainer. Sometimes you'll need them to demonstrate something, challenge your thinking or give you direct feedback. Other times you might need space to try something, get it wrong and work through what happened afterwards.

That's development.

Is Part 3 training just about passing the test?

No.

Passing Part 3 is important. It's the assessment in front of you and your training should prepare you for it.

But what happens the lesson after you qualify?

You still need to sit next to a learner, observe and listen to what's happening and support them with what they actually need. You'll need to adapt when things don't go as planned, understand why you're choosing one approach over another and recognise when there's something in your own knowledge or ability that needs more work.

That development doesn't suddenly stop because you've passed Part 3 either.

Your trainer should be helping you understand where you are, what you're developing and why you're developing it.

Part 3 is part of that process.

It shouldn't be the whole process.