Driving Instructor Earnings

How much do driving instructors get paid?
How much do driving instructors earn?
Driving instructor salary
How much money do driving instructors make?
Driving instructor wage rates

There's been a massive increase in visitors to a driving instructor webpage I run over the last few weeks, and it seems that most are wanting to know about the financial aspect of being a driving instructor!

In order to answer the "how much money" question, I'll start by explaining a bit more about the driver training industry in the UK and how it runs itself!

The first thing you need to understand is that the overwhelming majority of driving instructors are SELF-EMPLOYED (I'd guess at least 98%). Hardly any driving instructors are employed on a salaried basis by a driving school.

With very few exceptions, driving instructors in the UK do not "work for" a driving school - they work for themselves, either as independent instructors running a "one man/woman band" local driving school or they take out a franchise with a larger driving school.

When you see a driving school which seems to have lots of driving instructors working for it, those instructors have, almost certainly, taken out a FRANCHISE with that school.

A driving school franchise means that the instructor has to pay the driving school a fee every week or every month and in return the driving school usually tries to source pupils for them (although there's often a clause in the contract that pupil supply cannot be guaranteed), handles any necessary advertsing, allows the instructor to use the company name and sometimes provides a vehicle. The instructors themselves are responsible for their own accounts, tax, national insurance, business expenses, fuel costs etc.

When you see TV and newspaper adverts talking about a "guaranteed placement" with a driving school, they are NOT referring to a "job" with a weekly wage or a monthly salary...they are talking about a FRANCHISE, for which the instructor has to pay anything from under £50.00 per week with a small local driving school, to in excess of a staggering £370.00 per week with a nationwide Big School of Motoring. Some franchises do not include a supply of pupils and make an additional charge per pupil supplied on top of the franchise fee.

DRIVING INSTRUCTORS DO NOT RECEIVE A REGULAR WEEKLY WAGE OR MONTHLY SALARY.

The ONLY way driving instructors make money is from the fees their pupils pay them for teaching them to drive. If an instructor charges, say, £20 per hour for a lesson, that does not mean that £20 is theirs to spend - at least half of that sum will be spent out on their business expenses such as franchise fees, fuel and vehicle costs, insurance, advertising etc, leaving them with around £10 an hour out of which they then have to pay tax and national insurance.

As a very rough guide, the net hourly income for a driving instructor after business overheads, tax and national insurance is around £7 or so. I've based that rough calculation on the basis of 30 hours of paid work, so if an instructor works more hours, the net hourly income will increase and if they work less hours, it will decrease.

While it follows that the more lessons an instructor gives, the more money they will earn, unfortunately it's not always that simple...if an instructor works in an area where there are lots of other instructors in competition with them, they may find there is not enough work to go around. If an instructor becomes ill or otherwise unable to work, THEY GET PAID NOTHING AT ALL...however expenses such as franchise fees, loan repayments, vehicle leasing charges etc still have to be paid regardless of whether sufficient income has been earned and if they are not paid, legal action is likely to follow.

Being self-employed means no paid holidays, sick pay, pensions or any other "perks" that people who are employed might get.

The TV adverts for driving instructor training courses talk about "earning up to £30,000" a year. Note the use of the term "up to"...

You will have to work very, very hard to earn anything like £30,000. Up until recently, the advice I used to give was that in the first few years of a driving instructor's career, it would be unrealistic to expect to earn anything approaching that sum on the grounds that it takes time to build up a successful business and good reputation and in the early years overheads can be high as a supply of work needs to be obtained via advertising and/or a franchise, both of which can be expensive. In later years, as a good reputation is steadily gained and word of mouth recommendations increase, overheads decrease to some extent as less advertising is needed to get a sufficient supply of pupils. This advice, while still true, has now been affected by external economic influences and for many driving instructors, it is now even harder to earn a decent living.

In the current economic climate with people getting increasingly concerned about "the credit-crunch", global financial problems, job security and the rising cost of living, there has been a significant drop in the number of people wanting professional driving lessons as they "tighten their belts" and economise on their spending. With less people wanting the service that driving instructors supply and the fact that there are already over 44,000 fully qualified driving instructors, plus several thousand trainee driving instructors out there teaching on temporary trainee instructor licences, for many, earning anything approaching £30,000 is impossible as there simply is not enough work available.

It's one thing to be prepared to chase a goal of £30,000 by working your socks off and putting in long hours, but if there isn't enough work available, then for many it now simply isn't possible to achieve this aim.

The answer to the question "how much money do driving instructors earn?" is unfortunately, "not very much"...