Our Approved Driving Instructor Training course is just £1799 and it comes with a money back guarantee, too.
Please call our Recruitment team to discuss what is best for you to pay for the course – 0800 09 88 321.
We imagine that you are looking at a number of training providers, so a ‘like for like’ comparison might be useful…
We offer two great value for money courses, each has up to 64 hours with a Specialist Trainer: Our Standard Course to fit in around your commitments and our ‘6 Day ADI’ Intensive Course where you can really speed up your training.
| Company | SmartDriving | DITC | RED | LDC | AA/BSM |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Course Cost | only £1799 | £2400 | £2495 | £2000 | £2000 |
| Total Training Hours | 300 – up to 64 with a trainer* | Won’t tell you unless you attend a meeting | 38^ | 50^ | 48^ |
The one thing EVERY Driving Instructor in the UK will tell you is that your Driving Instructor training does NOT NEED to cost £2000 – £4000 like some companies charge!
With driving schools like BSM, RED, the AA and others, when you pay their fees, you are not just paying for your training but also for their ‘overheads’ and other costs such as advertising and sales teams etc… and of course, the cost of their driving school too.
Why pay for their advertising costs? Why pay for their sales team? Why pay for their posh offices and shareholders profits? And why pay for their driving school if you might not join them?
Wouldn’t you just rather pay for your training?
When comparing us to the other big national providers, you will notice a major difference in the price we charge. In some cases we are half their price.
Let’s take a look at what the break down of your training fee compared to what the Driving Schools provide you.
Again, we will look at the ‘Big 4 – The AA/BSM, RED, DITC*.
*All figures below are based on current marketing strategies and approximate costs but will give you an idea of what you are paying for (Jan 2016).
Any large business has ‘infrastructure’ and ‘operational costs’: advertising, marketing, offices, equipment, staff, management, directors, salaries, pensions, company cars and most of all, VAT to pay.
And all of these costs must be paid for and the customer often pays for this in the cost of the product – WE KNOW this to be factually accurate as we have operated like this in the past!
And of course in our industry, there is the cost of the Driving School itself to pay for too!
But, what if you don’t want to join their driving school?
You are then paying for ALL of these costs ON TOP OF YOUR TRAINING FEES!
Hardly seems fair, does it?
If we look at one of the ‘well know’, National Driving Schools for example, they have 12-15 or so ‘Area Recruitment Managers’ to recruit you on board, 15- 20 or so ‘Business Development Mangers’ for the driving school, each on a £25K salary, plus a car (£11K) costing £1.1Million a year!
Then you need to add in the call centre staff each on at least £12K, managers, directors, offices, etc and suddenly there’s £3 Million pound a year to pay…and guess where some of this comes from?
PLUS a company must make a profit…
If you consider that they may take on approximately 1000 trainees a year, they need to charge £2000 just to cover costs!
So you can see that by having a driving school attached to them, you are having to pay more!
Ask any ADI (Approved Driving Instructor), and they will each tell you the different ways they trained and each of them will have an opinion on what they would do the second time around!
Many trained with ‘Big Driving Schools’ and felt let down and all will tell you that if they did it again they wouldn’t use a ‘Big’ driving school company and they would tell you can do a lot of this course by yourself and not need to spend £2500 – £3500.
In most cases we would tend to agree with what they would suggest to you however there are a few things that we feel are fundamentally important and MUST be done to give you the best chance of being a successful driving instructor.
Let’s take a look at the 3 ways you can train.
This, in all honesty, should be the very best way to train.
Find a good, local ADI trainer. Check their skills, training pedigree, terms and conditions, reliability, course literature and resources.
But how do you find a ‘good local trainer’? What if they aren’t up to the standard or their materials are poor? How can you tell? How do you know?
The sad reality is that you do not until you have spent lots of money with them!
Training this way is also likely to be very, very expensive – perhaps £3000-4000.
With a driving school, you know you will get a minimum standard of quality and you also have a customer service policy, procedures and processes to ensure you should receive a decent service.
However, as a school also has the cost of running the actual school attached to it, they must charge a lot more – £2000-£3000.
Furthermore, the demand for ADIs is so great that the school will want to ‘tie you in’ – something that may not be a very good idea at this stage to restrict your options of work… What, if when you are qualified, the school do not have the work to support you? You are tied to them and cannot leave.
Training this way is what most ADIs would warn you against doing too.
In the 1970’s this was probably a realistic option – over 40 years ago! But now the requirements of the exams and the business after you have qualified mean that professional training is a must.
We urge that you should not try to train yourself – you do need some form of professional training! It will end in disaster and you will waste a lot of time and money in the long run!
This, in our opinion, is always going to be the best option.
Not only have we have sourced a team of dedicated, determined and passionate ADIs, that want to train new ADIs, but our training and management team are drawn from companies such as LDC, RED, BSM/The AA, LetsDrive and The Instructor College. We all want to work for a company that does things how they should be done – to give you the best start in your new career.
Our iCoursePro program is an award winning, comprehensive training course that utilises modern technology to help you.
PLUS, we are the only company to put our money where our mouth is a GUARANTEE that you will qualify or your money back.
Not to mention that we are just £1799, too.
If you are thinking of becoming a driving instructor then I can't rate SmartDriving highly enough.
The training system is excellent the virtual classrooms are enjoyable and very informative and Andrew and the team are always available to answer any queries, not matter how trivial.
Top Team who assisted me greatly in obtaining my ADI Licence.
Richard Hart
If you would like to know more about training with SmartDriving, simply
request your FREE info pack for full details
The only company ever to win 3 Prestigious Industry awards!
