What a mock test actually is
It's the whole driving test from start to finish, in the same order as the real appointment and marked the same way. It takes about an hour. When your real test comes, you'll have done it once already.
Mock test or pretest: which do you need?
People often book the wrong one. A pretest is a lesson: I watch you drive, we find what is costing you marks, and we work on it. A mock test is an assessment. I stop teaching, run the whole test to the RSA format and marking standard, and tell you afterwards how it went. If you already know your weak points, take the mock. If you don't, a pretest finds them first.
Who books one
Mostly people with a test date who want an honest answer on whether they're ready, and people who failed once and don't want to walk in unsure a second time. It's also worth doing if you drive well in lessons but think the formality of the day might throw you. Better to find that out on a mock.
What the hour covers
The same things the RSA lists for the real test: questions on the Rules of the Road and road signs, the technical checks on the car, hand signals, reversing around a corner, the turnabout, a hill start, and about 8 km of driving on different roads. The Wicklow and Dún Laoghaire test centre guides cover what the real day looks like.
Your car or mine
Either. If you'll use your own car on the day, sit the mock in it too, so you rehearse the car as well as the test. If you don't have one, or yours isn't suitable, use mine: a Toyota Yaris manual or a Ford Fiesta automatic, both with dual controls.
What you get afterwards
We go through every fault I marked and what it would have cost you on the day. You also get written notes, as you would after any lesson with me, so you know exactly what to work on before your test.
When to do it
Close enough to your test date that it shows how you drive now, and far enough out that you can still fix what it finds. A mock that turns up something big the week before leaves little time to work on it.
Booking a mock test
I run mock tests around the Wicklow and Dún Laoghaire test centres, on the roads those tests use. Send the short form with your test date and centre, and whether you drive a manual or an automatic, and I'll come back to you with times.