The best laid plans....

Just over a month ago I wrote about a pupil, "Zoe", who I had to reluctantly advise not to take her driving test, even though it would be her only chance before her theory test pass expired. This really upset her and she said that she was going to give up driving as she 'obviously was not a natural driver'. I suggested that she took a break from driving for a few weeks to see how she feels but (naturally) I advised her not to give up.
Yesterday was her first lesson after that short break. As I drove to her house I considered how best to proceed with her tuition. Had my fault analysis been good enough before? Because she could drive around Elgin and she could manage all the reversing manoeuvres, I had perhaps been guilty of ignoring the warning signs when things went wrong - only little things, but there was enough there to suggest that she would struggle driving without an instructor beside her. As a result, I had sometimes let mistakes pass with brief on-the-move comments about them, but maybe I should have pulled her over and got to the root of the problem.
So, yesterday, as she went through her cockpit drill, I explained that we were going to make a determined effort to perfect every aspect of her driving - not necessarily starting from scratch, but being more thorough than before. We were not going to jump around doing a few junctions, a parallel park, some rural driving, a turn-in-the-road, some more junctions etc. We were going to do junctions (including roundabouts) until they were perfect. Then, and only then, we would do, for example, parallel parking until it was perfect. If that meant weeks and weeks of junctions then so be it.
Unfortunately, the lesson did not go to plan - but in a good way. Whether it was extra concentration on her part or benefitting from the short break I'm not sure, but she drove around Elgin (almost) faultlessly. However, on the three occasions she did make a fault, I asked her to pull over and we discussed what had gone wrong, the possible consequences of that fault, and how best to fix it.
Who knows, perhaps next week she will have a disastrous lesson, but we are going to stick to our new 'no-nonsence' training programme until she is breathtakingly good at all aspects of her driving and she is bursting to pass her test and get away from me picking her up on every single little imperfection.