Ring three training schools within ten miles of each other and you can get three noticeably different quotes for what is, on paper, the same day. The course content is identical — DVSA sets it — so the difference is everything around the course. Most of it is explainable, and some of it is worth paying for.
What moves the price
Where you are
This is the biggest single factor. A school in central London is paying London rates for a site big enough to train on; a school on the edge of a market town is not. Riders near a city boundary often find that travelling twenty minutes outward saves real money.
How many of you there are
DVSA allows a maximum of four trainees per instructor on a CBT, and two on the road. A school running full groups can charge less per head than one running pairs. Neither is wrong, but you will get more attention in the smaller group, and if you have never ridden anything before that attention is the thing you are actually buying.
Whose bike
Almost all schools include bike hire, fuel and insurance for the day in the headline price. A few quote lower and add hire on top. If you are bringing your own bike it must be taxed, insured and MOT’d, and some schools charge slightly less — ask, because it is rarely advertised.
Automatic or geared
Training on a twist-and-go scooter is often cheaper than on a geared bike, and it is a shorter day for most people. But a CBT taken on an automatic restricts you to automatics, so if the plan is a geared 125 you want the geared course even though it costs more.
When
Weekends and school holidays are the busy slots and are priced accordingly. A midweek morning in February is the cheapest CBT you will ever take, and also the coldest.
The costs that are not the CBT
If your plan is a full licence, the day itself is the smallest line in the budget. Allow for:
- The theory test, which is a fixed DVSA fee.
- Module 1 and Module 2 test fees, also fixed by DVSA, with Module 2 priced differently on weekends and evenings.
- Bike hire and instructor time for each test — schools charge this separately from the DVSA fee and it is usually the larger of the two.
- Your own kit. A helmet you own beats a borrowed one every time, and boots and gloves are not optional for long.
- A retest, if it comes to that. Budgeting for one is not pessimism; the pass rates are public.
What a cheap quote can mean
Sometimes it means a school with its own site and no rent to pay, which is a genuine saving passed on. Sometimes it means four to an instructor, an older fleet, and a day that ends with you being asked to come back — at a cost. Two questions sort one from the other: how many trainees per instructor, and what happens if I do not complete on the day?
A school that answers both plainly is telling you what it is. One that will not is also telling you something.
Every price on ThrottleReady is set by the provider and shown as they gave it. DVSA test fees are set centrally and change from time to time — check the current figures on GOV.UK before you budget.