Gisborne round trip pays off for students

LEARNER: Larney Doyle (left), and Jeffery Karaka, both Year 11, are two success stories of Karen Hayward's (centre) drivers education programme.

There will more licensed drivers on Wairoa's roads soon due to the success of Wairoa College's drivers education programme.

Previously focused on the learner licence, the course grew this year to include those aiming for their restricted licence.

"We've had 150 students through the learners, but that's the easy part," co-ordinator Karen Hayward said.

In order to complete "the hard part", otherwise known as the restricted licence, six students would each miss 12 school days to make a return trip to Gisborne.

"There's just no way we can do it in Wairoa," Ms Hayward said, "we don't have the right conditions."

Instead, students would spend one day a week for 12 weeks making the three hour round trip to Gisborne for a one hour drive with a mentor. They would be driven back to Gisborne a final time to sit the practical test.

"We needed someone to teach them properly. Otherwise they go to the test and fail once, and then they're too scared to go again."

There was a push as the community "needed restricted drivers".

"A lot of people just stay on their learners," Ms Hayward said. "But the main aim is for the people of our community to be fully licensed."

This was the hope voiced at monthly meetings about the issue by representatives of Wairoa schools, iwi and police.

"We want safer driving in general - safer for drivers, and everybody else is safe," Ms Hayward said.

Wairoa College had been running learner licence courses for the past three years, which had a 95 per cent guaranteed pass rate. The learner courses involved six hours of learning from the road code, the AA website and a tutor.

The learners preparation and test were all able to be done in Wairoa.

Students had to pay for the tests, but funding for the course came from the Secondary Schools Tertiary Alignment Resource (Star), and through the Path Right Academy in collaboration with Caltex, NZTA, AA and NZ Police.