AA buys the assets of BSM for £1
AA buys BSM out of administration
BSM remains separate from AA after deal
British School of Motoring sold
The AA buys 100 year old BSM
BSM driving school is saved by AA buyout
Jobs saved as BSM deal goes through
This week has seen the demise of BSM Driving School, which coincidentally is twelve months after the demise of LVG Limited (trading as RED). Which begs the question ‘why’, why have two of the three biggest companies (by turnover of people and money at least) failed at both the delivery of driving instructor training courses and driving lessons. The answer of course has to be quality, or the lack of it because surely if the quality were there the rest of the industry would have been hard pressed to compete, marketing budgets, referrals et al.
The numbers of pupils the big three driving schools seem to declare they teach each year equates to an average of about 14 per year per driving instructor. Given their franchise fees can be an average of £300 a week or more one wonders how long some of the driving instructors have been able to finance this out of their own pockets. Coincidentally, given there are 45,000 driving instructors on the active registers and pupils at their peak taking their practical driving test equated to 700,000, the average number of pupils per driving instructor per year can’t currently be more than 15.5.
So, does this mean the big guys have sorted themselves out leaving the rest of us who deliver a driving instructor training course and driving lessons to flounder in the recession. Quite simply, the quality of your adi training will determine this as the success or otherwise of a driving instructor for the forseable future will be determined by his/her ability to generate referrals. The volumes of pupils many a driving school previously relied on to justify high franchise fees have long gone leaving poorly trained driving instructors without work.
It’s interesting the deal was done to save the jobs and the driving instructors business yet clearly the numbers haven’t stacked up for quite a while. Given BSM once commanded a price tag of £35 million nobody identified what was wrong let alone why and how they should fix it. There is no doubt jobs will go and driving instructors will be culled (rumours around 1000 driving instructors have been told already they are not wanted).
One wonders what will happen to all the pink badge holders given the AA has been very vocal in it’s dissaproval of their existence. Also, whilst they may choose to transfer those franchise agreements, the company they were with will be liquidated and therefore surely the terms and conditions should cease to be valid.
Perhaps, given the quite obvious weakeness of the large companies, the Driving Standards Agency might take the opportunity to speed up their upcoming consultation to improve driving instructor training. In that way they can move to implement more stringent quality standards and controls on recruitment ensuring driving instructors in the future are trained to coach to the standard required to deliver the GDE Matrix competencies. Perhaps then even the AA will begin to appreciate how much practice and training is needed to become a driving instructor.
The Daily Mail newspaper has an article covering BSM in administration and a few interesting comments have appeared already from ex employees and driving instructors. Keep your eyes peeled on the forums etc for even more disenchantment to surface over the next few weeks.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1352260/AA-buys-UKs-biggest-driving-school-BSM–just-1.html
The Driving Instructors Association has collected some of the information coming from the various parties involved.
