Times are tight for many people but for those with redundancy money or savings that they are willing to invest in an ‘alternative career’, then the constant barrage of advertising from organisations such as the “Instructors’ College” (on billboards and in the printed press) or from “Red” (on the Discovery channels), (amongst others not specifically mentioned) could seem appealing.
However. All is not what it seems.
For those not aware of the name, John Farlam is a well known, and respected, name in the field of ADI training.
Being on his mailing list, and don’t ask me why I recently received the following which may serve as a salutary warning to anyone considering such a venture.
Reproduced with permission of the author.
I am e-mailing following a request from the Trevor McDonald programme on ITV. This may be of particular interest to you if you are undertaking ADI training, or have had training in the past, with one of the larger UK training companies.
If the issues affect or have affected you, you can help others and the driver training industry in general by responding to this message (please respond directly to ITV mentioning that you were contacted by John Farlam at SmartDriving). As anyone who knows me well will tell you, I am passionate about ‘cleaning up’ the UK instructor training (and development) industry - this is a great opportunity for instructors to have a voice.
ITV1 is making a programme about the different ways that people are spending their redundancy money.
They are looking for people who have spent their redundancy on training to become a driving instructor, but it has not worked out as they hoped. These are likely to be newly qualified instructors who are struggling to make ends meet, or those who have invested their money but who’ve failed the exam.
Maybe you are frustrated by the promise of qualifying in a certain period and its taking much longer. Maybe you are close to giving up altogether and are facing huge debt. or possibly you have already given up. Maybe you have now recovered from problems caused by poor training but would still like to have an opportunity to help others to ‘see the light’.
ITV would like to hear from anyone who has invested their redundancy in this new career and has had a bad and costly experience trying to fulfill their dream.
If you’d like to find out more ITV would love to hear from you. Please e-mail Emily Burndred: emily.burndred@itv.com or call on 0161 952 0993.
If you are affected by training issues and would like advice you can e-mail me: john@smartdriving.co.uk
Best wishes
John Farlam
Hopefully, none here will fall into any of the categories mentioned but, if anyone were to consider such an avenue for a future source of income, then the warnings are not to be ignored.
This can stay here for a few days but will probably get moved to the Health & Family forum.