Capt Bolt
I agree with most of the advice form those above and as the owner of an aviation business if I was walking in off the street I would not pay me any money up front !!!!
Finding a training provider can be quite a problem, the standard of instructors is so variable, the young keen ones are usually OK but lack the airmanship that comes with thousands of hours of flying, the old ex- airline or military guys are the best they have nothing to prove and lots of experience.
Avoid like the plague and one who is quick to tell you he is trapped in the instructing game because he can't get an airline job......... He will not have your interests at heart.
AIRMANSHIP ! You will come across this word from day one in training it should be common sense applied to aviation however some in the business have been applying airmanship to acts that they don't understand the reason for because it has always been done that way and turning it into a black art.
If you don't understand the reason that an act of "airmanship" is being required of you please ask you instructor to tell you the reason you are doing this, after all it is his job. I could go on about this but I can tell you that there are places in the UK that are still operating American engines to some of the operating procedures for Gypsy engines, some of these practices are in direct contravention of American service instructions.
READ the FLIGHT MANUAL ( or POH) this is the bible for flying your aircraft know it inside out, I give the new student a question paper and the FM and tell him to find the answers, it gets the guys looking through the book, if you can't get hold of a flight manual copy walk out the door...... It is not the place to learn to fly.
The flight manual gives a set of speeds & settings to fly the aircraft, these are based on MTOW and as you are very likely to be below MTOW when flying as a student this builds in a little more safety but if you are told to fly an approach at a speed that results in exceeding 1.3 Vs threshold speed by more than 2 or 3 Kts this will result in poor landings NOT additional safety.
I hope this will help you avoid some of the pitfalls of learning to fly, I was very lucky as all my instructors were old timers who instructed to keep themselves active in retirement.
Finally I will leave you with a bit of advice from one of the old guys who instructed me.............. " Lookout... In my day we had to keep a good lookout to avoid an ME109 drilling a hole in my back...... Being hit by another PA28 will kill you just as dead ".