Why we are not paid more??
Fancy Navigator
Actually it was worse than that as the £15 per day only related to 20 days a month so the other way of looking at it if you want to work 30 days a month is £300 a month retainer and max PPL hours I ever did in a year was about 550 total. You do not need an IR to be an instructor so my advice to the prospective instructor would be - why not do the instructor rating instead and save the money on the IR until you have a significant amount of experience under your belt?
I actually agree with Flingingwings' post about not just valuing yourself but being valued. It is not just about the employer valuing you, but the whole of the industry has to value instructors. They simply do not. We are the most valuable part of the pilot chain because it is through our good training that the basic skills and habits are instilled in the future airline pilot or instructor, yet we are treated like the lowest form of the food chain. It is virtually impossible to undo sloppily taught habits and disciplines and it is the accident statistics that reflect shoddy teaching practices - namely failure to understand the importance of use of carb heat, inability to calculate fuel consumption, weight and balance, field length required etc.
We have, however, to earn and deserve the accolade of professionals and in order to do that we ought to pay attention to everything, even our spelling and grammar in these posts, as this reflects on our own self-respect, attitude to standards and communication ability. I must say I despair of the appalling grammar and spelling on these Fora (plural of Forum as data is the plural of datum) - it clearly reflects the lack of attention to detail displayed by the authors.