Afters...?

Well, I stuck to my guns, and refused to give in , and ultimately, prevailed.

Since then, my performance has nosedived, at least using test results as an indicator.

No instructor has a 100% success rate. There are just too many variables, not all of which are directly connected with driving. So we have both passes and fails, that come more or less randomly. Sometimes I get a run of passes, sometimes a run of fails. And sometimes, a sequence of alternating passes and fails. That's just the way of it. Just numbers and statistics and stuff. Just because I have a lot of consecutive passes, doesn't mean I'm some wunderkind instructor. A lot of consecutive fails don't mean I've somehow become worse at what I do.

Still, it's hard, when things are going well, not to feel that I'm God's gift to driving instruction, and when things don't go well, it's hard not to question myself, and wonder if I could be doing things differently.

So here are my numbers from the last 6 months... X = Pass. O = fail.

October 2017: XOXOOX (50% pass rate)
November 2017: OOO (0% pass rate)
December 2017: X (100% pass rate)
January 2018: XOOOXX (50% pass rate)
February 2018: OOOO (0% pass rate)
March 2018: OOOOOO (0% pass rate)

Ten successive fails is my worst ever run by some margin. So what's happening here?

Well, partly, it's just the luck of the draw, as I explained above. The overall pass rate nationwide is just a bit under 50%. Close enough for "Heads or Tails" to be a useful metaphor. Sometimes I will flip a lot of one or the other.

Partly, the test itself changed in early December. Perhaps I've not done enough to prepare myself or my pupils for the new aspects of the test.

Yet I find myself wondering...

I haven't become a crap instructor over the last few months. Could it be that this, or at least some of this is payback? Surely not. Such a thing would be an outrageous abuse of position, and I have to say, on the 3 or 4 tests that I sat in on in 2018, the fails were marked correctly. Yet one or two of my pupils, on tests where I didn't sit in, really struggled to understand why they'd picked up serious faults.

It wouldn't be difficult to engineer a fail. Give instructions just a second or two later than usual to make people rush. Err on the side of harsh when any borderline situations arise. Be extra authoritarian in manner to crank up the nerves, etc.

Surely not.

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