Standards of riding instruction

[eahotson]

Lady on our yard. Middle agedish. Rode as a child, long break, went to local riding school for a couple of years and now has a very good schoolmaster type horse on loan. Having for the last year very regular private lessons from instructor from riding school. STILL has no idea about LEGS TO TURN. I don't mean she can't do it. I mean no one has even tried to teach her.She is a perfectly intelligent and capable woman and as far as I can see, all her instructor has done for her is take her money off her. I have said NOTHING.

 

[BBH]

Its really hard isn't it but I think particularly for anyone new to riding they can't actually tell if they have a good instructor because they don't know what they should be achieving and by when. Instruction is such an emotive subject, people want different things from an instructor, some may be uninterested in the technicalities and think an instructor is good because they build confidence, have fun etc. Others may want to know all the in's and out's. Another issue is that instructors teach different ways of doing things. Its a bit of a lottery really.

We had a lady with an instructor on a previous yard with the same scenario, the instructor was just lazy and saw her as an easy target. She was awful in ripping her off, she paid for 45 mins but had 15/20 mins lesson ' cos the horse has done what we have asked'. No refund/ reduction though. She was asked to school / hack the horse whilst the lady was at work and again 45 mins paid for but the horse was lucky if it had a 10 min hack.

Not very honourable in my humble opinion.

 

[NeilM]

It is a minefield I looked into before accepting that I would just have to try and bite my tongue (not always successfully) and let my OH teach me.

As a novice, all you can do is ask for recommendations, but for every person who tells you that 'so and so' is good, someone else will say ' don't go to them'.

My plan was to take some lessons before starting to ride again. As I said, in the end I just started to ride with my OH, who is a superb rider, but a litlle...umm, how do I put this (as she is also on the forum) ROBUST in her criticism

It is very hard to tell someone that they are not receiving all that they should be taught and make it not sound like sour grapes.