To add to my earlier comments many of the flying schools run their businesses as if it were a hobby, not a business. The owners may make a living out of doing so, but they are unlikely to attract any investment. It is because they cant attract investment the PPL training market has remain unchanged for as many years as I can remember and will not change so long as the present regulatory environment remains in place.
That is the reason they don’t or cant pay their instructors properly and also the reason why the aircraft are poor.
A very few have tried to invest heavily themselves (where they have funds available from their own resources) but I don’t think any one has succeeded because the majority of the market is not willing to pay the prices necessary for them to recoup their investment. A few individual willing to pay an extra 10% or 20% an hour is not enough.
Take two aircraft, one new the other 20 years old in a condition that reflects its age, charge £20 a hour more for the first and watch what happens. As little as £20 is enough to ensure you have almost no takers for the first and a que for the second - extraordinary you might say, but they are the facts.
For that reason as I said earlier the business model is fatally flawed. Bose has a point that if the aim is to turn out good pilots there may be a better way in which everyone involved accepts they are running a club not a business.
The only exception are commercial training providers which is the only market where the schools can operate as a business. At this "level" the economics change. The "punters" are on a mission, the business is able to operate in almost all weathers, and must invest a considerable sum in the infra structure - which keeps the free lancers and smaller schools at bay. Schools like Oxford make money, they are a business and they are investable.
Anything else is a hobby, which as a bonus you might make a bit of money at and have a lot of fun running. It is just a shame these operations sit at the cross roads as I commented earlier - neither fish nor fowl - and it is the instructors and students that often suffer the consequence.