Where your driving school fee goes

Most of your driving school fee stays with the school, because the part JPJ keeps is small and the rest has to cover a car, an instructor and a patch of land with a pretend road on it. I couldn't find anyone publishing a real breakdown, so the split further down is my guess.

A price with a lid on it, mostly

The fee has a ceiling, or it did the last time I can find anyone saying so out loud. In 2018 the transport minister put it at RM1,150 for a manual car and RM1,250 for an automatic, lessons and exam fees included, and said JPJ collects only a small portion.¹

A Borneo Post report a month later has the manual at RM1,200.² I'm going with the minister, and I couldn't find a newer list from anyone.

What people say they pay is another matter.

A car licence course, in ringgit

The Malaysian Trades Union Congress, MTUC, said the fee ran up to RM2,300 in 2023.³ Some of that gap is allowed, since schools can sell extras like pick-up, as long as they're optional and on an itemised bill.¹ I can't tell you how much of it is pick-up and how much isn't.

My guess at the split

Here's what I think a RM1,250 fee is doing, once you take the extras away.¹

Where a RM1,250 fee might go, my rough guess

The one JPJ line I can price is the learner's licence, which a 2025 guide gives as RM30 for three months.⁴ That's about 2% of the fee, if it's even inside the package.¹ I couldn't open a JPJ schedule of test fees, so the ten per cent is me being generous.

The instructor is the line I'd expect to stay stubborn. One person sits in one car with one learner for an hour, so it doesn't get cheaper as the school gets busier. I'd have called it the big one, until I got to what a circuit costs.

The fake road is the surprise

One institute near Serian was built for RM4 million on six acres, according to a board member quoted in that Borneo Post report.² It's a single example from 2018, and I don't know if it's typical.

Divide that by RM1,250 and you get 3,200 whole fees, with nobody paid and no car bought.² If only a fifth of each fee goes to the place, as I guessed, that's 16,000 learners.²

Spread over ten years, that's about five new learners every working day, ignoring interest.² So I think of this as a business that has to keep a queue moving, more than a business of teaching one nervous person well.

What does it earn if you fail?

This is what I most wanted to know, and I couldn't find it. I looked for a pass rate by school and found only blogs, and I couldn't find JPJ's own retest charge either.

What I can find are the edges of it. In 2018 Sarawak's JPJ director spoke of complaints that schools were charging RM1,800 to RM2,000 for a car licence "until they pass".² The minister had already ordered schools to stop selling that package, as part of stamping out charges above the set fee.¹

Who carries the risk?

I see why the minister wanted it gone, because a price above the ceiling is a price above the ceiling. But look at what that package did. With an until-pass deal, your failure is the school's cost, so it wants you through quickly.

Without one, a fail may well mean more money going in, though I can't say how much of it stays at the school. A learner who fails also holds a slot someone else could have paid for, so I wouldn't call a fail pure profit.

MTUC's complaint points the same way: it said candidates pay RM100 for missing a JPJ test, and it wanted JPJ running all the tests, with schools only teaching.³

So I'd have kept the honest version of that package, priced in the open. The minister was right about the hidden charges, and I could be wrong about the rest, since I don't know how many schools would still offer it at a fair price.

Machines might settle it

The automated eTesting the minister announced in 2024, for three institutes to start with, is built to move things along. The minister said schools could charge at most RM100 extra for it, and that candidates could retake failed elements of the practical test the same day, at no extra cost.⁵

Up to 150 candidates a day could go through, he said.⁵ That's a queue moving, which suits my theory, and a free same-day retake takes a little of the profit out of failing, if there was any.

If I were enrolling, I'd ask for the itemised bill first and then ask one more thing, in writing.