Your New Career as ProScot Driving Instructor

As well as being one of Scotland's premier independent driving schools, ProScot also ensure our driving instructors are amongst the highest earners in the industry, we admit there are cheaper franchises out there. However, a cheap weekly franchise is of no use if it means delivering low value lessons, cheap deals, and introductory offers with gaps in your diary. All this, whilst being forced to cover a large geographical area and work unsociable hours. Suddenly the cheap weekly franchise is costing you money!

Quality Franchise and Professional Instructors

The high standard of training and service offered by our instructors and reputation of the school ensures a constantly high level of demand for our driving lessons. We are currently looking for motivated passionate and likeminded individuals who would like to join the ProScot team and deliver a professional service to ProScot pupils. In return we offer a quality franchise offering value for money. Combined with the full back-up of our successful driving school, to ensure you succeed as a driving instructor.

We prefer to recruit instructors who have undertaken ProScot's Approved Driving Instructor (ADI) training programme. However, opportunities are also available for non-ProScot trained instructors to operate under our banner, providing they meet our standards and successfully complete an interview and assessment.

A Franchise with ProScot

ProScot has a range of franchises which have been developed to meet the needs of individual instructors, enabling them to operate with the full support of a highly respected organisation, while retaining the independence, flexibility and earning potential of a sole trader.

Before signing up to a driving instructor franchise, always check it's going to provide everything you need. In our opinion, a franchise which cannot provide enough work, or provides work over a large area (wasting time and increasing fuel costs) or provides work which largely consists of discounted lessons and unsociable hours should not be top of your list!

At ProScot, we believe that a good franchise should be flexible, it should provide a steady supply of high-quality, high value pupils in your local area at times to fit around your lifestyle. It should provide full support at a competitive cost and should enable you to make a great living - all part and parcel of a ProScot Franchise.

What will I earn as a ProScot Driving Instructor?

That depends upon several variable factors. How many hours do you want to work? How many weeks holidays will you take? Whether you are a ProScot Instructor, ProScot Senior Instructor or ProScot Principal Instructor. However, our instructors generally earn between £35k to £65k per year (Lesson rates 2022).

ProScot Qualified Instructor Less than 1 year experience - Full Franchise:

Let’s suppose you work an average of 38 hours per week over 48 weeks and take 4 weeks holiday per year. You are a fully qualified ProScot instructor with less than 1 year experience on our most expensive "Full Franchise" (Some of our instructors choose to work less hours than this and some choose to work more. Some require less pupils and pay our cheaper variable franchise.)

On our ProScot Headboard full franchise, where the instructor provides their own car provides average instructor net earnings of £44,660 per annum before Tax and NI (this includes 2 weeks holiday per year franchise free).

Average hourly rate £38.50 an hour (Based on a combination of 1 hour, 2 hour and block booking at our current lesson rates 2022)

Average hours worked per week 38

38 x £38.50 - £1,387.50 Gross income

Full Franchise - £200

Car - £100

Insurance - £10

Maintenance/Servicing - £10 

Fuel - £120 average based on current prices. 

Net weekly earnings: £947.50. (£44,660 per annum)

(The above figures are based on current lesson prices, fuel and car costs with our headboard franchise and 6 weeks franchise free periods built in).

The same instructor working an average of 40 hours per week and taking 4 weeks holiday would earn £47,200 per year.

Trainee Licence Instructor - Full Franchise:

Let’s look at a worst-case scenario. A Trainee Driving instructor on our full franchise with a ProScot supplied vehicle who only wants to work an average of 30 hours per week with 6 weeks holiday per year. These instructors would still earn £33,350 per year. (All figures calculated on 2022 costs)

Tax levels when you're self-employed are typically lower than PAYE at around 12%. There are tax deductible items such as clothing, phones, heating, electricity, mortgage as part of your home is used as your office, and you do not need to supply a vehicle for work and fuel back and forth. 

Senior Instructor: Flexible-24 Franchise

Working 40 hours per week average, 4 weeks holiday

£39.50 x 40 = £1,580 gross income

Flexible-24 Franchise £110. 

Car - £100

Insurance - £10

Maintenance/Servicing - £10 

Fuel - £120 average based on current prices. 

Net weekly earnings: £1,230. (£59,040 per annum)

Principal Instructor: Flexible 12 

Working 30 hours per week average, 6 weeks holiday

£41.50 x 30 = £1,245 gross income

Flexible-12 Franchise - £60. 

Car - £100

Insurance - £10

Maintenance/Servicing - £10 

Fuel - £100 average based on current prices. 

Net weekly earnings: £975. (£44,390 per annum)

A Principal instructor working an average of 40 hours per week with 6 weeks holiday per year would earn £62,040

As you can see ProScot instructors can earn anywhere between £35k and over £65k per annum after all overheads are paid.

The Devils In the detail! What is a High Value Franchise?

We advise you to make a cup of coffee or tea first before settling down to a good read. You really can't afford not to read this. This industry has its fair share of sharks, and it is very important that you realise what you're getting yourself into. All is not as it appears; all training organisations and franchises are not the same. Some are no better than a car hire company or a time share organisation looking to take your hard-earned cash and deliver only disappointment, failure, and misery.  

John Macdonald, ProScot's Director describes the benefits of a ProScot Franchise and takes the time to try to help you to fully understand what makes ProScot different and why you must be very careful when choosing a training school and a franchise. Please take the time to read it carefully. 

"I see lots of Franchise organisations quoting high earning potential for their instructors, but the reality is that this cannot be backed up if the same school constantly promotes cheap introductory offers, ongoing deals and charge low lesson prices. If their instructors are required to cover large geographical areas or work unsociable hours to fill a diary. This is not a workable or sustainable business model for any instructor. The fact is most schools do just that! RED currently offer driving lessons from £19 per hour and 6 hours for the price of 4 (2022) on their Learner section of their website! Yet on their driving instructor section of their website, they claim their instructors earn up to £50k a year and up to £40 per hour! Which is it? You can’t have it both ways. 

I'm a realist I tell it like it is, I've been in this business for many years and so the figures you see are real and honest based on my experience since establishing ProScot in 1996 and building an enviable reputation for quality and professionalism.  
ProScot provide an unlimited number of pupils to our instructors under our full franchise, basically our instructors can take as many pupils from us as they need, it's all included in the cost of the weekly franchise fee. We do not give an instructor a franchise with us if we are unable to support them with a full diary, yet some franchise organisations do just that. They promise a pupil supply, but what use is low value work? ProScot do not require our instructors to provide cheap lessons deals and offers, we have never sold on price, our lessons are sold on quality and service.  

Instructors are often tied into a contract with a low value franchise which does not supply either enough work, or low value work and sometimes both! These instructors can quickly find themselves in debt to the franchise and by the time they pay for the weekly franchise fee, car, and fuel there is often nothing left over to live on! It's simple at ProScot, if we are unable to provide a full diary, we would not have given the instructor a franchise with us in the first place. It’s also true that we would never charge a franchise if the instructor didn’t have enough work. We are super honest and fair, our instructors will testify to that.

ProScot provide between 6 and 36 pupils per year for well established Senior and Principal instructors. New instructors and those with less experience typically need between 50 to 70 pupils per year from ProScot. This number tends to reduce as the newly qualified instructors generate word of mouth and retain their pupils better. That's why ProScot provide loyalty discounts and a reduced-price franchise for our longer serving instructors who move from ProScot instructor to ProScot Senior and Principal instructors and require less help and support. We call this our flexible franchise.  

Each instructor can usually generate some of their own word of mouth pupils, potentially another 10 - 30 pupils per year or even more depending upon how well established they are, how popular they are with their pupils and proactive with their own marketing using Facebook for example. We encourage our instructors to develop their own word of mouth, to reduce their franchise costs. This enables ProScot to take on new instructors and continue to expand. As ProScot expands we pass on a cheaper franchise to our well established Senior and Principal instructors. This is why our retention rate is better, our franchise grows and develops. 

So, what is the benefit to an instructor if a franchise guarantees you a high number of new pupils per year if those pupils are all based on cheap deals and offers such as the first 10 lessons for £200, 5 lessons for £100, 3 lessons for £60 or the first lesson for free? The average driving instructor has overheads of between £12 - £15 an hour so you can end up working for less than £5 per hour for your first 5 or 10 hours of work and then the pupil leaves you just as your offer ends and you were about to earn some money! Would you want to work each week for 5 hours or more for such a low rate? Probably not and neither would most instructors given the choice. 

The ProScot model is not based on this approach, we value our instructors and our name and reputation too much, if our instructors are not making money, they would become disillusioned and leave and then ProScot would not be making money! I learned a long time ago that if I wanted our instructors to remain loyal and stay with our school we would need to look after them. This meant keeping our instructors busy with high quality students in their local area at times that suit their lifestyle with top lesson rates and no introductory cheap deals and ongoing offers. Does that mean all schools and franchises can copy the ProScot model? Certainly not, and not straight away it takes years to build the brand and to build trust with a great name and reputation.  

I've always said our customers don't want cheap lessons; they want value for money and good service. There's a big difference. Everyone knows that if an instructor charges low priced lessons and provides cheap deals and they struggle to make a good living they will not be motivated and inspired to do a good job. They will have to cut corners, they provide older substandard cars, they spend more time talking at the roadside, they cut down on mileage and fuel, they try to extract more lessons to make up for the initial loss through the introductory offers etc.  

We believe our franchise offers the best of being a sole trader whilst being with a good franchise. Does that mean none of our instructors leave us? No! Some still do, and it's usually because they are being kept busy enough to try and make it as a sole trader or they have not worked out just how much support a quality franchise like ProScot can give them. Some instructors simply look at the fact that our "Full franchise" might be £50 to £80 a week (in some cases as much as £100 per week!) more expensive than some of our competitors, but they don't consider that the lower priced franchise which is based around cheap, deals, offers and ongoing cheaper lessons, covering a large geographical area is now actually losing them money!

This type of franchise also attracts a certain type of customer looking to save money, they often expect to be ready for test after their first 10 to 15 hours of lessons, remember they are on a budget! A "cheap" franchise can end up being a very expensive franchise! The dropout rate is much higher as pupils are not prepared to pay the higher lesson price when the offer ends. They look for another school providing cheap deals. The instructor now must replace the pupil and guess what they are back to offering an introductory deal for the next pupil and the cycle continues. They are busy fools. This is what is known as a low value franchise. From experience about 75% of these instructors are no longer full-time instructors or they continue to charge lower priced lessons and provide introductory offers, stuck in the cycle. They also tend to work more unsociable hours and cover larger geographical areas as they must take what work they can get.

So, it is not as easy as some think to keep a constant stream of high-quality work rolling in to maintain a full diary, in the area and at times you want to work, but that's exactly what a great franchise should do for you. It should take the stress of wondering where the next pupil is coming from to let you concentrate on being an instructor.

Each new pupil usually provides an average of between 35 to 40 hours’ worth of work (the DVSA quote 44 hours).
Instructors can average a dropout rate of between 10% - 30%. These are pupils who take a few lessons and dropout for various reasons; did not like the car, the instructor, driving was not for them, ill health, change of circumstances, lack of finances etc.
To maintain an average of a 40 hour a week over 46 weeks, with 6 weeks holiday most instructors need about 50 pupils per year. They would need to average about 44 hours a week from March - October and about 32 hours per week from November to February. An instructor therefore requires about 60 pupils per year minimum to average a 40-hour week over 46 weeks with an average dropout rate of approximately 20%.

A ProScot instructor only needs between 6 - 8 pupils per year from ProScot or the income from the first 5 hours of lessons each week to cover the weekly cost of our Full franchise. They only need 2 pupils per year from ProScot to cover the cost of the Flexible-12 Franchise. So, the ProScot franchise well and truly pays for itself.

Many franchised schools and sole traders don't believe our figures. But our lesson prices, lack of offers and franchise rates etc are there for all to see. As a school we regularly operate waiting lists as we often struggle to allocate pupils to our instructors who are already too busy to take on more pupils.

ProScot command the highest hourly rates in our area. As you can see our model is not built on cheap deals and cheap introductory offers as this simply undermines the professionalism of the school, the instructor, and the industry and the instructor becomes a busy fool earning a low income. Would you want to offer 10 lessons for £199 or 5 lessons for £99? First lesson for free?

What image does that portray about you and your school? Quality and professionalism? Generally, it tends to attract low value pupils who often leave after the initial offer ends and the cycle of hunting for low value pupils continues and who loses out? The franchise organisation? No, they expand their school with more instructors in the area on the back of low-priced lessons. No, it's the demotivated instructor trying to work hard to fund the low value franchise with lost hours and minimum earnings. Quality does not come cheap. 

AS THE SAYING GOES:
"The sweetness of an initial cheap price is long forgotten after the bitterness of poor-quality training"

We make sure our instructors do not have to travel over a large geographical area, it simply wastes time and fuel. ProScot instructors typically work a 5-mile radius (rural based instructors might need to cover a larger area, depending upon the population density).

ProScot also believe that our instructors should not have to work mainly unsociable hours consisting of mostly evenings and weekends to earn a living, the majority of our instructors’ hours consist of daytime midweek lessons.
So basically, I would strongly advise you to keep away from any low value franchise which tends to offer low value work. Promotes cheap introductory offers and low lesson rates, often combined with having to travel large areas with a higher-than-average percentage of unsociable hours.

ProScot look to recruit professional people to join our team, who would be a credit to themselves, the industry and ProScot. Quality instructors delivering quality training which enables ProScot to continue to command top lesson rates and a busy diary for all our instructors. ProScot continue to provide training and support to our instructors to ensure our standards are maintained. Our customers know that with the ProScot brand they will receive the highest levels of tuition from an established, proven, and reliable company. If you like the sound of that, please get in touch we want to chat to you”.

John Macdonald, ProScot's Director

Contact us now for more information