Your licence, from your side of the screen

“How much longer have I got?”

It is the question everybody asks and almost nobody answers plainly. One screen does nothing else: it tells you what you still have to work on, in sentences, and how many hours you are likely to need.

The detail, if you want to check

Behind the sentence sits the official syllabus, subject by subject, with what your instructor noted after each lesson. You can also write down what you want to work on: they will see it before your next session.

Your sessions, and your calendar

The lessons ahead and the last ones done, with the instructor and the place. You can plug this schedule into the calendar on your phone: it updates itself, and you never have to copy out a date again.

Changing or cancelling a session from your own space, on the other hand, depends on your driving school: it is the school that decides whether to open online booking, and the school that sets the notice period for cancelling. If it has not opened it, the screen tells you so and sends you to enter your availability, instead of leaving you clicking at nothing.

The theory test, with nothing more to pay

The practice is inside your own space: 3,662 questions for the car, 2,500 for the motorcycle. Each set is put together from your earlier answers - neither too easy nor disheartening - and marked straight away. Your level is only shown as reliable once you have answered enough questions; before that, the screen says it is provisional.

As the test comes closer, another screen answers a question more useful than your percentage: what you, personally, keep getting wrong - topic by topic and question by question, from your own answers.

And on the day of the practical test

The safety checks are revised in the same place: three hundred questions - fifty inside the vehicle, fifty outside, a hundred on road safety and a hundred on first aid - in the format used on the day. This module only appears if your driving school has opened it; otherwise the screen tells you to ask them for it.

There is also a crib sheet of road signs, sorted by what they mean rather than by their code, and theory lessons written for the car test.

What you do yourself

• Give your availability: a typical week, and specific dates when you cannot make it.
• Write to your driving school from your own space, without hunting for a number.
• Accept or refuse a quote.
• Sign a declaration: you tick, you copy out “Read and approved”, and it is filed and time-stamped. If you are under age, your legal guardian adds their name and the same wording.
• Get your invoices back as PDFs.
• Put yourself down as waiting for a slot - and take yourself off the list when you no longer want one.
• Book and cancel a lesson - when your driving school has opened that up.

What is yours, and nobody else's

Your space does not open by changing a number in the address: there is no number to change. Everything you see starts from the person signed in, never from a number written into the link.

The assistant that answers your questions about driving and about the theory test has no access to your file. For your own situation - your schedule, your payments, your results - it sends you back to your space or to your school. That limit is deliberate.

You can take back everything about you in a single file, at any time, with no permission to ask for. And you can close your account: your record is emptied of what identifies you, the accounting entries stay because the law requires them, and nobody can sign back in as you.

If things are not going well

One screen watches what your schedule does not show: the gap between two sessions. It compares the current wait with your own rhythm, not with a driving-school average - somebody who has driven once a month from the start is not dropping out, they are moving at their own pace.

Another tells you who is taking your next lesson, and what has changed since, when the reason is known.

And if you want to stop, take a break or move to another school, you say so from your own space, with a reason and a comment if you like. It is written down, dated, and it appears on the school's side in its list of declarations - not in a phone call somebody reported back badly. You can go back on your declaration; nothing is erased, the line stays and carries its date. If you are moving away, a page first explains what you take with you.

If you are under age

Your legal guardian has a space of their own. They see your progress and your hours there, and the whole money side - contracts, payments, invoices - which you do not see. That is not an oversight: they are the one who signs and who pays.

You are not the one who chooses

The way a driving school follows you is the school's choice. But you are the one who lives with it, from the first appointment to the licence. If you think these screens would have saved you three phone calls and two lost weeks, say so to your school - and send them the page written for them.

You can also look at what they see from their side : they are the same screens, seen from the office.