Hi Folks,
I don't normally take part in forums and make comments on them even less often. A BCUK member has just phoned me with details of this thread. There are times when an industry takes a bit of grief and those old and bold members on here will know that I'm no stranger to controversy. Unfortunately, you can't see a glint in the eye over the internet.
My company is called Survival School as some of you may be aware. Many of the contributors on this thread and others have been on our courses and I have become friends with a great number of you over the years.
The prices mentioned by Neil are accurate(ish) but generally speaking a little conservative. So prices from £160 (I would suggest) are fair and I'll explain why.
For the larger organisations (I would include Survival School in this) there is VAT to pay.
This means that the School gets only £150 per course per person from a £175 course fee. 10% give or take goes to the landowner. Instructors (at least x 2 as it would be in the course attendees' best interests not to draw a course to an abrupt close if someone was taken to hospital etc) normally get 10%. (This means that so far we have taken out 47.5%).
That's nearly 50%. We have also got to take into account advertising, food, fuel, car maintenance, insurance (if there are 2 or more you need employees liability - well over £1000), postage, time taken in paperwork, stationery, electricity (the hamster that powered my computer and lighting is away on holiday at the moment), telephone calls, spare kit, new kit, cleaning products for old kit, That accounts for another 25% - ish and I'm sure I haven't covered everything.
This means that the profit made is maybe 25% of course fees. That's a pretax and pre-NI figure.
Gunslinger is correct about the setting up though. The more you do it, the slicker it becomes - back in 1997 I used to leave at 9am to set the courses up. Now it takes considerably less time.
The schools learn new tricks each time they run courses to make their lives easier and save on time and effort. I think that's fair enough.
What I would say about all this is that may be we (the schools) are not transparent enough. On every course I run I encourage participants to call me if they have any questions and never once has anyone asked me gunslinger's question. I would always welcome a phone call from anyone with a question like that. Incidently, my number is 0871 222 7304 if gunslinger (or anyone else) would like to talk about it. My email is
jonny@survivalschool.co.uk - please get in touch.
I think the prices are fair but not transparent enough and this forum may go someway to addressing that. May be potential customers and participants should also get on the phone or email and ask the school what they get for their money.
Happy Forumming
Jonny Crockett
Survival School