The Average Price of Driving Lessons Going Up

As economists will tell you - when you get a glut of supply, prices will drop.

They will also tell you that when prices drop enough, suppliers will stop producing, as they cannot afford to continue, which ironically pushes the price back up!

At the moment, there is a glut of driving instructors across the country, but more and more instructors are giving up the job and returning to "normal" paid jobs. The insecurity and low pay has taken it's toll on them. Irresponsible customers who cancel late and pay irregularly are often cited as the final deciding factor - just a few phone calls during the week can half the weekly profit.

And when the excuse from the pup is "well I can't afford it anymore" then we have to wonder if we want to keep servicing these kind of people.

More and more of the bigger companies are advertising "first 5 lessons for £49" or similar - an excellent advertising ploy, drawing lots of people in to start lessons which are not economically viable for the driving instructors who are pushed into offering them by their franchises. Unfortunately the people who can afford driving lessons at less than £10 an hour simply can't afford them at £20 an hour, or they decide they want to try another special offer from the next franchise, so you lose money on 5 hours work, and get nothing from it.

So we are going to lose instructors.

More instructors will move into specialist training like Fleet and FLH.

Learners will need to take more lessons to fulfil their year long learning obligations.

Ergo - prices will rise.

Considering that at the moment, it costs on average around a grand to learn (45 hours at £20 an hour, plus a bit to be insured on your dad's insurance, test fees, dvds etc), how much do we think the public will pay.

I reckon that if I couldn't drive, it would be worth well over £3000 to me.

Roll on the £50 driving lesson. I might even move back to teaching learners for that money!