DO, absolutely right.
Unfortunately, there is an argument that many flying school owners use (rightly as well much of the time) which is that no matter what the schools pay, then frozen ATPL holders will bail for the first airline job that comes along no matter what they are paid by a school, so why should they bother paying a decent wage?
I don't agree, but that is the mentality of many school owners.
The training industry does need to attract more people with cash. The life blood of flying is that it is open to all, but there is a shift towards microlights and a/c like the Ikarus for those of us with less disposable income and we need to attract the more affluent to the more expensive SEP machines.
Why the more affluent? Well, frankly, prices are too low to allow clubs to do anything but survive most of the time, unless they have seperate revenue streams such as mentioned by Colin at Strathaven. So if you can't get enough in to allow you to invest with some surety, then it just won't happen.
I have been in the training iundustry for a few years and I wouldn't invest one penny of my own money into as it is. Not a chance. The roi is rubbish and the risk enormous. I'd rather buy Bradford and Bingley shares to be honest.
IO makes some very good points, though I will disagree about PPL FI's stuffing things up. When people work for for free just for the "love of flying" and because they have a salary from elsewhere they don't really care, it utterly stuffs things up for anyone who relies on their profession to actually pay them.
I had a massive row with a BA training captain when he said he didn't want paying. I said, "no, you'll be paid the same as everyone else, if you want to give your money to charity then fine." He basically wanted to try and jump the queue and get more students and charge less. I even found out he had not charged certain people for his time on flights. I went crackers.
You may say "how nice of the chap, to give his time for free." However, that is utterly unacceptable in a team of FI's, it undermines everyone else and is incredibly selfish. Just because you earn £150K/year doesn't mean you can ride roughshod over others who rely on teaching to earn a living.
A good school has a core of FI's who work together. Parity of pay is an essential part of that. Start having different pay scales based on anything other than experience or subjects taught (IR, IMC, Aero's etc) and you are just asking for trouble.