If you book a course in a manual gearbox car, you will have to learn to coordinate the use of the clutch and gears as part of your driving test, but if you pass your test in a manual car, you will also be qualified to drive an automatic. An automatic car will change gear for you, so there’s less for you to worry about in your handling of the car. However, if you take your test in an automatic car you will not be licensed to drive a car with a manual gearbox. Around 90% of cars in the UK are manual gearbox cars, but automatic lessons will be more expensive than lessons in a manual car.

You will need to have passed your theory test before we can confirm the date of your practical test, so if you haven’t already passed your theory test, fastPass can include it as part of your intensive course package. There is no additional charge for us making the arrangements for you, (apart from the cost of the test itself), and our free online theory help will give you access to over 2,500 mock revision questions and 135 hazard perception clips. As far as we’re aware, this is the biggest online theory help resource in the UK.

We will offer you the earliest course we have available within the time band you select. At this time, we cannot guarantee the exact date of the driving test within the course, as this can only be confirmed once a course has actually been booked. This is because actual times and dates are subject to DSA availability, which is true for all driving schools, no matter what promises some websites may make.

If you have passed your theory test and we have an early course availability, but we are subsequently then unable to book a driving test exactly at the end of that course, we will hold back a day from your course to cover the earliest convenient driving test date that we are able to book. If this happens, you may then want to budget for a few additioal lessons, which can be provided by your course instructor at a reduced charge compared to our normal course rates.

If you have not yet passed your theory test, we suggest you choose a course start-date which allows you enough time to pass it, because once you book a course it cannot be altered if you fail the theory.

Sometimes, the fear of the unknown can strongly influence the result of a driving test for even the strongest of candidates. Even though you might have previously failed a UK practical test, you shouldn’t underestimate the fact that, having gone through the test process once, you may be psychologically better prepared than someone not having taken the test before.

All UK driving instructors have to be registered or licensed with the DSA and will have been tested to deliver at least a minimum standard of competence in the provision of car driving tuition to members of the public. The number of professional driving lessons you’ve already had should help reduce the number of lessons you will need on a fastPass Intensive Course.

Although less likely to have been as effective as professional driving lessons, any driving experience is relevant when calculating the most cost effective course to suit your needs. Even if you’ve only ever ridden a motorcycle, this will have given you some road experience and you might want to include some notional number of hours as “road experience” for purposes of this question.

There may be good reasons why you might have been unable to continue a regime of driving practice after you originally started to learn to drive, but if you last drove some time ago it may mean you need to recover your “mojo”. You’ll be surprised how much you actually remember once you restart your tuition, but the longer it was since you last got behind the wheel of a car, the more likely it will be that it will have an influence the course that we recommend for you.

Some pupils find great difficulty in mastering some of the techniques necessary to be able to move the car in a confined space. Reversing exercises, in particular, can hold a particular dread for some learners. Your own assessment of your ability to manoeuvre a car – if you’ve had such practice in the past – should be brutally honest, because, (for example), additional lesson time will need to be allowed for if you’ve already had a number of hours practice at manoeuvres, but still consider your manoeuvring ability as “Poor”.

fastPass pupils who are sure that they’ll be able to have extra driving practice before the start of their intensive course will obviously require a shorter course than a pupil who is relying totally on the course to get them to test standard. If you are unsure whether you will be able to get extra practice, assume that you will not be able to. Any “unexpected” extra practice then should strongly increase your chance of passing.

Intesnive courses are normally conductred during weekdays, so “a one-week course” would usually count as 5 tuition days. But if you need a 40 hour course, spending 8 hours a day focusing on the single task of learning to drive is not for the faint-hearted. Having to concentrate for such long periods of time learning what may be a completely new skill will bring with it its own stresses so, for optimum learning, fastPass recommends booking no more than 4 hours a day. A 40 hour course over two weeks, would be far more effective than the same number of hours over one week. However, we understand that this may not be practical if you have a limited window of availability, and we’ll do our best to arrange a training schedule that will give the best results within the time you want.

Intensive course lessons are generally arranged during the normal working week, (Monday to Friday). This is partly to familiarise yourself with the type of road and traffic conditions that you will face on your actual test, and because evening and weekend slots are often reserved for pupils needing additional tuition, or for an instructor’s non-intensive course learners. If you want to book a course with lessons after 6 or at weekends only, you will need to be willing to spread that course over a longer period, and you may be charged a premium.

If you live a long way from a test centre, or if you live a long way from the nearest centre of population, it may be better to arrange your course to start from an address other than your home. This will enable us to source an instructor who is more familiar with the test routes than perhaps an instructor living locally to you might be. Also, if the earliest available test date at your nearest centre is months away, you might want to arrange your lessons where there are earlier tests available.

However, to avoid a large chunk of your course then being taken up in providing a rather expensive taxi service, (meaning you wouldn’t get the full benefits of the driving tuition to properly help you prepare for your test), you must make sure that you will be able to travel to the pick up place every day for the course because the instructor probably wouldn’t be able to change the pick up address if the agreed location later proves inconvenient for you.

We can generally only source English speaking instructors so our quotation assumes this to be the case. If you decide to book with fastPass, you can request that we try to source a particular ethnic instructor, but we cannot promise this, and you will not be able to cancel a course and get a refund if we are unable to find a particular ethnic instructor of your choice.

As a general rule, the older you are, the more lessons you’ll probably need to become test competent, and we’ll take this into account when recommending the best course for you.

One of the factors affecting driving ability on the day of a test is the nerves of the candidate. Even a lot of driving experience may not overcome the mental hurdle that some pupils have to jump when faced with an examiner sitting alongside them and, unfortunately, this is very difficult for fastPass to assess. Obviously, the more practice you have, the more likely it will be that you will be able to instinctively “do the right thing” when faced with any unexpected, or particularly challenging, driving conditions that might occur whilst on test, even if your confidence is low.