Pupils make accusations Is a Swiss driving instructor school offering useless certificates?
Smile Fahrlehrerausbildung AG offers courses throughout Switzerland. The catch: anyone who invests time and money in training ends up with a certificate that is not recognized by the authorities.
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- A driving instructor school is said to have issued certificates to its graduates that do not meet official quality requirements.
- These requirements were raised in January 2025.
- Former students claim that they were not informed of the problems with the recognition of their training.
- The driving instructor school contradicts these statements and claims that it was not informed about the loss of its certification.
On paper, the matter looks quite simple: Smile Fahrlehrerausbildung AG has a wide range of courses for prospective driving instructors* in Switzerland. At the end of the training, you would think that graduates would be able to start looking for a job as a driving instructor.
If only there wasn't one last hurdle that Smile is no longer able to overcome: the Quality Assurance Commission. It has something to criticize about the provider's module certificates: They no longer meet the new standards of quality requirements for training. In other words, they are invalid.
Quality requirements raised in 2025
This was not always the case: In the past, Smile only offered courses that could later be used to realize the goal of working as a driving instructor. However, this changed on January 1, 2025, when the quality requirements for driving instructor schools were raised. Various courses lost their usefulness, some have since been recognized again, others not.
Seven Smile graduates told SRF's "Kassensturz" that they had not been informed by the company about problems with the recognition of their certificates. A statement that Smile itself "firmly and formally" rejects.
Pupils were informed transparently and the school was not informed about the withdrawal of its certification. A corresponding letter from 2024 never arrived. "No proof of delivery has been provided to date," reads a statement on the company's website.
Industry association calls for "legal consequences"
The industry association L-drive contradicts this claim: Smile "like all other module providers, was informed of the new quality requirements several times, by email and by registered letter", association president Michael Gehrken told "Kassensturz".
With regard to the alleged lack of information to students that their certificates could not be recognized, Gehrken is "clearly of the opinion that this is not possible. There must be legal consequences."
On its website, Smile Fahrlehrerausbildung AG offers courses from 9500 francs; according to "Kassensturz", the offers go "up to 28,000 francs". If the company really did withhold the problems with its certificates from its students, it would have breached its duty of disclosure, as Roger Rudolph, a professor of employment law at the University of Zurich, explains. Those affected would have recourse to civil law.
