UNSCRUPULOUS driving Instructor schools are taking advantage of people who have been made redundant by promising new recruits they will earn great money from being an instructor at a time when learner numbers are falling.
A survey by the Alliance of Sector Skills Council Scotland collected data from a range of industries to assess how trade was holding up and how they foresaw the recession impacting on business.
GoSkills, the council representing passenger transport, which covers bus, rail, taxi and aviation industries, and also driving instructors and schools, reported a fall in demand from new learners: “Driving instructors have been reporting a downturn in business. This would normally happen after Christmas but has been particularly marked for this period last quarter of 2008.”Among the key indicators are reports from the Driving Standards Agency (DSA) that test centre figures are down 5%. More worryingly, GoSkills warned that an increase in redundancies could see new instructors flooding the industry and chasing fewer learners.
Richard Wheater from GoSkills said: “The driving instructor’s job is sometimes seen as a soft option and people are a little bit misinformed about it when they see the adverts on TV.
“You see the salaries that can potentially be earned, so yes, it’s a risk.”
One of the UK’s fastest growing driving schools, Red, which also trains instructors, told the Sunday Herald it had seen a “surge” in interest during the past 12 months. It is due publish official figures tomorrow.
There are 40,000 driving instructors in the UK, 3,000 of them in Scotland.
Barbara Trafford, managing director of the ADI Federation, said the market is already “saturated”. She said: “There’s always been a trend for people training as driving instructors, but what’s worrying me now with the credit crisis is that there are a lot of people, perhaps with redundancy money, who are looking to see if they can earn money elsewhere. Unfortunately, the adverts are not quite true, because we are saturated. We are not looking for more driving instructors.”
She claimed the situation in Scotland was particularly dire because recruits were especially vulnerable to “hard-sell” tactics. Someone who attends an interview in England and is persuaded to sign up to a financial agreement, typically a loan starting at around £3000 to cover training costs, would be entitled to withdraw within a fixed period of time but candidates in Scotland have no “cooling-off” period, she said.
Tied into a contract and faced with high-interest repayments on their loans, they are dismayed to discover there is no guarantee of qualifying, let alone earning the promised high salaries.
Trafford said: “It’s been going on for 10 years or more, but it does seem to be increasing and becoming an industry in its own right. It’s not one that anyone in our industry agrees with, because we believe people are sucked into it, they’re given the hard sell, they’re signing on, and then they’re not getting what they thought they would be, and they end up unsuccessful at the end.
“I had someone ring me the other day and say they promised they would give me a job of 40 hours a week’. I said, well, did you get that in writing’ and they said, no, they said they couldn’t put it in writing’. I wonder why. That is what they’re being told – and it’s wrong.”
Aeneas MacRitchie has 40 years’ experience as an instructor, examiner, and, until last year, as an instructor trainer and now represents the Driving Instructors Scottish Council in meetings with the DSA.
He said: “If I said 50% of my business came from the companies we’re speaking about, which advertise nationally on television, radio etc, that would be an understatement. What these people found was that they were spending their money, and when they came to part three they were getting a week’s intensive training which was grossly inefficient – far too much knowledge to take in too short a period of time.
“And as a result they would then contact someone like myself. I would take them out and their knowledge was very limited and they were having to fork out additional money to me.”
Source: Sunday Herald website, By Helen McArdle
Comments please from driving instructors and driving schools who are BADDIA (Bedford and District Driving Instructors Association) members giving driving lessons, Pass Plus, a2om BTEC in Driving Science, advanced lessons, automatic lessons, disabled lessons, towing lessons, refresher courses, motorway lessons, fleet training, instructor training, in preparation for driving tests or driver improvement in the Bedford area.
