To retrain as a driving instructor?

[confusedlady10]

Would I be stupid or unreasonable to consider quitting my job and re-train in a new field as a driving instructor? I am a 29 year old single mum WFH in a dead end call centre job. It’s quite niche as it involves investigating specialist fraud cases but is still mainly a customer service job. The pay isn’t that great (£2k pm after tax living in London) and I’m fortunate to be able to live in cheap accommodation through family, but it’s not sustainable.

I’ve had applied for hundreds of jobs to try in earn more money and elevate, even paid someone to re-write my CV and do an extra qualification in my field within finance. But I don’t have a degree and regardless, I’m struggling to stand out. Hundreds of applicants, countless ghosting's and unfortunatelys after an odd interview. Finance, admin and banking sectors seem to be too saturated whether remote, hybrid or office.

So I was thinking to quit my job, and hopefully retrain as a driving instructor as I heard that there’s good money and I can be more flexible with having a child and could hopefully work for myself or another company. I would hopefully be able to work it around my son and less competition for the jobs I am not getting. I've been driving now for 8 years. Am I wasting my time and dreaming?

I have asked about looking into a trade job on here, and may look at an electrician or trade course next Sep at college but many of the courses without waiting until Sep are quite expensive, so I was hoping to look into somewhere like AA for driving with a payment plan? (I have no experience in this and trying anything to earn more at the moment, whilst still applying for jobs like crazy, pls be nice!) 😣

People want driving lessons after work/college and on weekends - how is that going to work around your child?

That's true. I could do Saturdays fine. But the week days might be hard. I hadn't considered that.

You also need to consider what you'd do re. childcare if you're sat in traffic somewhere on a lesson, or what you'd do when your pupils need your car at an awkward time to book their tests.

My mum was a driving instructor! It worked really well, she picked us up from school every day, chose her own hours, could work more or less depending on how the finances were looking.
she did used to work in the evenings, maybe once a week from 6-8 (but my dad used to look after us). You may not be able to do evenings but most 17 year olds, even those at college, have free periods during the day so she used to get plenty of custom.

Ooh that's true. I'd have to plan it carefully and consider traffic! I can do 7:30am-6pm due to my son going to morning and breakfast clubs, I'd just have to have a cut off point for my lessons and when they can use the car. Thank you.

Thank you!

One of the teaching assistants at ds school is a driving instructor in the evenings and on Saturdays. Seems to work well for her she's been doing it for years. She going to teach my daughter to drive.

I was a DI for 20 years before entering the law. It's flexible and sounds as though it might be a good fit for you. I'd advise doing the training before giving up your job.

Ask yourself do you have a burning passion to be a driving instructor or are you scrabbling around looking for something that you think looks good? I don't mean that in a disrespectful way, I was desperately unhappy so set up my own business doing something i thought I would enjoy, I lasted 3 yrs and spent a lot of that time contemplating giving it up. My dh is an ADI so I can tell you it's really hard work, despite being self employed he works later than he planned some nights and it's not the big earner people think. It's very expensive to run the business too. That said if it's what you really want to do i would probably stay away from the big driving schools as the cost is extortionate and you can be tied in for a couple of years. There is a Facebook group called I want to be a ADI I would join that and get some advice from newbies and experienced ADIs. Hope that didn't sound too negative because my dh loves it, he copes well with the stress and finds it very rewarding. You just have to be prepared to put in the hard work.

How difficult is it to become a driving instructor?
What are the setup costs?

I’m learning later in life at 40, I really wanted and eventually got a female instructor. Surprisingly hard to find! You may be popular. However, working people and school age learners will mostly need lessons that are evenings and weekends, how will you sort childcare?

I looked in to becoming a driving instructor, spoke to a few too. The thing that put me off was that there’s a test that you have to do and I think you get two goes and then you can’t do it again for two years if you don’t pass.

Also if your student gets test you need to be flexible to make your car available, take them to the test etc, the tests start quite early in the morning but aren’t at the end of the day.

Yes thats the part 3 you are talking about. You basically have to do 3 tests and I think you get 3 goes at part 3 (could be wrong dh isn't here to ask)

Don’t resign yet. I was reading recently about how hard it is for trainee instructors to get their final assessments completed due to lack of examiners.

If you can do it while still working, then it might work well. As I’m currently supervising ds2 while he learns, I know it’s not a job that I’d enjoy!

Lots of demand for automatic DI here

I looked into this.

You need to work quite a lot of hours to justify the car costs/insurance especially if not your main car.
Also the training. You have to wait a long time for part 2/3 tests due to lack of examiners and they're very tough.

Perhaps start in the evenings whilst your still working your current job (once you're trained) and use the spare wages for childcare whilst you build up a customer base. Once you start getting more demand for daytime lessons, then its time to quit your day job.

When my friends and I were learning to drive we all went during school hours, it was always allowed to go during free periods in sixth form. Maybe do some investigating as to the rules in schools around you?

Oh sorry week days are tricky, I thought they were the preference.

They do. But very few driving instructors offer this where I am. And most of them are fully booked.

Aren’t you the poster who was thinking about becoming a plasterer? I think you really need to take some time to think carefully about what it is you really want to do and what will work around your child.

Why not do the first part of the training alongside your current job? DH is doing it in his spare time. It costs about £1000 through a driving school.

I was an instructor for some eight years: I started in 2004, and stopped in about 2012, because the industry was hit quite badly by the recession, and it was difficult for me to get enough work, so I moved on to something else. This may be different now, because of the backlog caused by lockdowns. It's doable, but you need to check out the competition first in your area, to make sure the area is not saturated with instructors. One way to do this is to contact various driving schools, and ask what their waiting time is for lessons.

Regarding the training and test: it's in three parts: a theory test (part 1), an advanced driving test (part 2), and test where examiner pretends to be a learner (part 3). When I did it, you are indeed only allowed three attempts each at parts 2 and 3, so getting the right training is essential.

Avoid training with big driving schools such as BSM: they often charge a massive fee for the training up front, without caring whether you pass or not, then tie you into a punitive franchise contract which makes it very difficult to work independently later (forbidding you from teaching any pupils of theirs). Instead, find a smaller driving school, with an instructor who is ORDIT registered (Official Register of Driving Instructor Trainers). The big driving schools will not tell you this. Independent trainers usually charge per hour instead.

Also, keep in mind that Net Zero and all that nonsense may make it very expensive to be an instructor in years to come: government after government sees motorists as a cash cow. Petrol now costs nearly twice as much as it did when I was an instructor, and car drivers (and instructors) are an easy target for the green agenda.

There’s a desperate need around my way for female driving instructors for women who don’t want to be on their own in a car with a man they don’t know. I think you’ll be fully booked in 10 seconds and can pick and choose your hours.