Hi There
Firstly unless things have changed very recently there are no JAR approved flight schools in South Africa. There are a few that claim to offer JAR training and it can be difficult to precisely understand what they are claiming - they are afterall trying there best to get your hard earned pounds from you.
If a JAR CPL or Frozen ATPL is your aim then doing a lot of your intital training in SA can save you a lot of money as well as significantly enriching your aviation education. The Modular route for obtaining JAR fATPL would be as follows:
1. Obtain ICAO PPL (Can be done in SA)
2. Build hours so that you have a minimum of 95PIC and a minimum of 150 total. (Can be done in SA)
3. Pass 14 Exams - you must either be at full time ground school or enrolled on an approved distance learning course e.g Oxford or Bristol.
4. CPL prep and test (Must be done in JAA state)
5. IR course Minimum 55 hours (Must be done in a JAA State)
6. Approved MCC course - 20 hours in a sim.
Notes:
FTC in Johannesburg were at one stage (not sure if they still are) involved in a tie up with Air Atalantique in Coventry and offered a residential Ground school. The CPL and IR flying all had to be done in a JAA state though.
43 in Port Alfred offered some sort of structured hour-building for people aim for a JAR ATPL. Personally my opinion is that you don't need to bother with paying them over the odds and just do a night rating so that way building up some basic instrument flying skills as well as becoming acquaited with radio aids.
About 18 months ago the rules regarding the JAR Instrument Rating changed slightly. For holders of an ICAO IR a conversion was introduced whereby only a minimum of 15 hours needed to be flown 5 of which could be in a sim. This reduced the costs somewhat as Oxford charges £4,300 for this course as opposed to £11,200 for the full course.
An SA IR(ME) will set you back about £3000 so that will be a saving of about £4000. NB in order to get an SA IR you need to pass 6 theory exams (
www.caa.co.za)
I hope the above is helpful. As I'm in a similar situation to you that is some of the information I have managed to come up with. Don't sue me if it's not 100% accurate but I'm confdent it's pretty much spot on. There's a good website that I have found helpful which deals with the whole UK-SA question:
www.uksa.flyer.co.uk
Best wishes
GT