My road to becoming a driving instructor

For me - flexibility. I do a lot of gigs as a sax/woodwind player. For instance, a few weekends ago, my band played a small festival in Berlin, and it was a huge pain to organise time out from work for everybody. We often gig in London and need to arrive early for soundchecks, and the weekend after next we play up in Newcastle, arriving at 3pm - I'd soon run out of leave in a regular job, so being self employed, where the pupils are flexible and irregular from one week to the next with lessons is a perfect fit for my lifestyle :)
 
But surely the risk massively outweighs the very modest 'reward'? All you need is 2 weeks off sick and you've lost another fortune, a fortune its hard to absorb on £18k before tax and after expenses a year!
 
I'm not too worried - I have other income streams (music teaching etc). The job itself is also part of the draw. I'm a qualified secondary school teacher, I love teaching, but not the paperwork and inflexibility and crowd control involved with a school/college job.

Teaching older 6th form kids in small groups and individually I find most personally rewarding, and driving is more of a necessity than music lessons for the vast majority.

Doing something I love doing and will look forward to each day, with the flexibility to gig and work as a musician in bands and theatre pit orchestras (etc.) is worth a lot to me.
 
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Not sure how you came to a takings figure of £18k, £75 per day?

6-8 chargeable hours = approx. £150...

Regardless, if you work everything out it still results in <£10ph Net.
 
A little bit of an update on my driving instructor voyage! :)

Having gotten as far as I thought I could practising by myself and taking advice from friends and internet forums, I took the step of getting in touch with with a local independent instructor trainer last week.

I went out for my first "Part 2" session last week, which included an hour long initial assessment drive, so the instructor could find out where he'd be starting my tuition from. We drove around the town for a good hour, took in town centres, country roads and dual carriageways, performed all the manoeuvres, and generally I drove in the manner I've been practising - by the book, but in a "businesslike" manner.

I didn't quite expect an assessment quite as good as he gave. Apparently my driving is very competent, my planning is excellent, and it was one of the best initial assessment drives he'd seen in 17 years doing the job! :D

Got told to book my part 2 test "last week"...! So, aiming to take my test ASAP, which will be mid January.
 
This is an interesting read, timbob.

Being a learner driver myself and getting an hours tuition each week, it's nice to know what my instructor has to go through :p
 
Two of my fellow drivers at work are former driving instructors, both say they earn considerably more driving trucks than teaching learners, which is why they switched.

And neither can moonlight (legally) as a cabbie due to HGV drivers hours regulations....

Make of that what you will.
 
One of my friends was a driving instructor for 10 years, he used to run his own company with one other person, he packed it in because he was working 6-7 days a week pulling 50 hours + just to make a basic living.

He got cheesed off listening to the same rubbish being spouted out by people day in day out and being sat in the car all day doing 10 - 30mph was just boring.
 
My father retired from the fire and rescue service in 1995 and decided that because he was still fairly young he wanted to start his own business. He loves driving and is a classic car enthusiast so he decided to set off on the same journey you are taking, timbob. After a lot of hard work and effort, he now runs the most popular driving school in our area. I set up and managed his website for him which has proved to be very worthwhile and served him well. When you get to the stage that you are fully qualified and ready to go, get yourself a quality website sorted out, it will make all the difference.

If you have any questions regarding your training, forthcoming exams or anything else related, let me know and I'll get back to you with any useful info I can. Either here or my email is in my Trust, feel free to drop me a line. :cool:
 
nichorob said:
You wont find a driving instructor who works 8 hours a day Monday to Friday as his main profession.
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your kind of right, as there is a lot of competition out there, so doing 8 hours every day is tough to get, however i do average that most weeks but to do 8 hours of lessons your work day will be about 10 hours, i only do instructing.

timbob said:
My sums aren't sooo gloomy! Working 20 hours of tuition a week (13-14 students, as 90 minute lessons are the norm in the countryside round here), I should gross over £24k a year.

More experienced friends reckon a gallon of fuel per lesson, so £100 per week, plus insurance and other car costs should tot up to around £500 a month. That leaves £18k before tax, which should sit quite nicely alongside my private music teaching.

Anyway, more questions on the job itself, less on the validity of my sums! ;)
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you need to allow for cancellations, and test passes, and natural wastage (leaving for uni etc) not to mention down time due to servicing, bad weather etc.

timbob said:
For me - flexibility. I do a lot of gigs as a sax/woodwind player. For instance, a few weekends ago, my band played a small festival in Berlin, and it was a huge pain to organise time out from work for everybody. We often gig in London and need to arrive early for soundchecks, and the weekend after next we play up in Newcastle, arriving at 3pm - I'd soon run out of leave in a regular job, so being self employed, where the pupils are flexible and irregular from one week to the next with lessons is a perfect fit for my lifestyle :)
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how will your learners feel about you not booking them in for lessons for a week or two so you can do your other stuff? how many will stay if they are not getting regular lessons with you?

to get the mystical 30k that the adverts tout you will need to be working 6 days a week, every week, all year. (see reasons above)

good luck tho, the pass rate for the part 3 test is only around 20% of what is left after the parts 1, and 2.
 
cyclopopcicle said:
your kind of right, as there is a lot of competition out there, so doing 8 hours every day is tough to get, however i do average that most weeks but to do 8 hours of lessons your work day will be about 10 hours, i only do instructing.


you need to allow for cancellations, and test passes, and natural wastage (leaving for uni etc) not to mention down time due to servicing, bad weather etc.


how will your learners feel about you not booking them in for lessons for a week or two so you can do your other stuff? how many will stay if they are not getting regular lessons with you?

to get the mystical 30k that the adverts tout you will need to be working 6 days a week, every week, all year. (see reasons above)

good luck tho, the pass rate for the part 3 test is only around 20% of what is left after the parts 1, and 2.
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Interesting points, and useful input - thanks :)

I'm still pretty happy with my sums. I'm a decent position at the moment with my music teaching. I can live purely off the income that brings in. It is well paid - but there's not a lot of it about. Anything the driving brings in on top of that will be a bonus - so I have no desperate need to build the diary up fast. Just to clarify - £30k a year isn't the aim or target. A job I enjoy and find satisfying which can earn me an extra £12-15k is the aim in the first instance.

Likewise, my gigging shouldn't be a problem. I'm not away for weeks at a time - I merely need to finish by 4pm on a Friday once or twice a month. I'm fully aware how important it is to be reliable and steady in a line of work such as this, and I have a good reputation and many happy clients as a sax teacher -all of whom came to me by word of mouth.

My fingers are crossed for passing - I have two sessions left before my part 2, which my instructor has said is more than plenty. We've already begun an initial look towards my part 3. We spent an hour in the opposite seats on our last session, with me instructing first on steering and then on moving off and stopping. Apparently I had a very easy and natural approach, was calm and clear, and made it "easy for him to get it right". Looking ahead, he's said he's not worried about my part 3 - which is putting my mind at rest a bit! :)
 
Update time:

I've been working towards my part 2 test with my instructor (which is coming up quite soon!) and had my mock test today, which I successfully... failed! :(

My error came on a one way street with 3 lanes. I was in the left lane, and a taxi pulled up on the left ahead of me. Another taxi behind me played silly billies, swerved out and moved alongside in order to not let me out and to get ahead of me. I didn't spot this early enough, and wasn't positive enough in signalling, putting my foot down and moving out before getting boxed in, and having to brake a bit before merging out behind the taxi.

All fine other than that though - the instructor conducting my mock gave me a couple of pointers to avoid small things which he gave me the benefit of the doubt on, but which miiight just be construed as minor faults by a picky examiner.

It's been a really interesting experience so far, the driving standard required is very high, and hard to achieve for the full hour without making a single mistake - especially under pressure.
 
timbob said:
the driving standard required is very high
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So it should be, given your teaching people to use a lethal piece of kit, i.e. a vehicle.

Alas, from the many things I see instructors doing with learners on my travels, if anything, they don't seem high enough!

Sorry to hear you failed, if at first you don't suceed.....
 
R420LA6X2/4MNA said:
So it should be, given your teaching people to use a lethal piece of kit, i.e. a vehicle.

Alas, from the many things I see instructors doing with learners on my travels, if anything, they don't seem high enough!

Sorry to hear you failed, if at first you don't suceed.....
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Indeed, I agree entirely. I'm practising hard and am aiming to pass without a single error. The point was for the information of those reading the thread, as most RL friends I speak to are surprised by the standard required...

Anyway, it was only a mock test with an instructor trainer, and a valuable experience. The real one is coming up soon, and hopefully I'll pass without any faults at all - that's the goal :)
 
It depends on the day, with both my bike and driving test everything went well, no sudden panic braking to avoid old women, no idiot taxis, it'll be fine on the day :)
 
Update time...!

I had my Part 3 test in Bedford yesterday. I've been working with my trainer, having weekly 2 hour sessions and covering all the topics and pre-set tests for the exam. I think in all I've had about 30 hours tuition.

The test itself is a strange roleplay experience. The examiner pretends to be two different pupils for half an hour each. The first phase portrays a pupil who's had a handful of hours, is still very much a learner, and you must teach them a lesson on a randomly chosen topic - turning into a side road, emerging from T junctions, doing a turn in the road etc etc. During the second phase, the examiner portrays a more advanced pupil (or even a full licence holder) who needs more coaching than direct instruction.

During each phase, the examiner makes any number of faults, and it's your job to correct them by spotting them, analysing them by talking with the "pupil", and helping them with some remedial action. You're then staying on top of the situation by giving prompts in good time so as not to let the "pupil" make the fault a second time... It's taken quite a bit of work to hone my technique, despite being quite an experienced teacher in other subjects - my classroom doesn't usually move!

After the test, the examiner grades each phase from 1 (dangerous instruction) up to 6 (flawless). You're required to score a 4 and above in both phases to pass. In my mock test a fortnight ago with a colleague of my trainer's, I'd scored a 5 and a 6, so I was hopeful of a pass, despite my nerves.

As it was.... I passed!! A 5 for phase one, and a 4 for phase two. I'm slightly disappointed not to score better, especially on the phase two, but I was properly bricking it for the test, and I think the nerves blunted my performance somewhat! There was a lot riding on the test - with fees for the exam itself, and 2 1/2 hours of my trainer's time, each go would have cost me £186. And you only get three goes to pass!

My cheque for my licence is in the post, and I'm off car shopping tomorrow, happy days!
 
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