Do PPL ground exams have to be sat at the same school you're training at?

[S-Works]

I think the working group have done an excellent job of slimming the content of the papers down. I get few complaints from candidates these days about the content of the papers. We include 10hrs mandatory ground school split across the papers to revise properly rather than answers and have an excellent near 98% first time pass.

I suspect most of the complaints seen here are from people who did the old exams.

[The_Pink_Panther]

JJ1999,

"... training at ... probably one of the most expensive in the country"
"there are other schools nearby".

I'm assuming there are very good reasons behind why you don't make the obvious action of moving to one of the other cheaper nearby schools.

Playing devil's advocate; if they are the most expensive, your £20 x 9 isn't going to buy you any lessons, singular lesson at best. Another consideration is, will it be worth the extra fuel to travel to the other places, and depending how your flight training school is going to feel about it, (and whether they will levy a small admin charge to process the paperwork) whether it's worth the aggravation.

Fortunately for me, my school were fine with it, (albeit about 4 years ago now), I get the impression that some schools frown on it, and can make it awkward. Your school could ask you to fly an extra hour to demonstrate that you can execute the navigation plan you did for that paper, or some such scenario, and then you're back to where you started, and have a less cordial relationship with your school.

I'm not "buying or selling", just trying to give you another view on what you may want to consider.

Here's why I'm taking the time to respond and make you think:

A colleague of mine saved "thousands" learning to fly in the US. Once he'd added in the actual cost of flights to the US, accommodation, it wasn't "thousands", but was still a good saving, and a quicker route.
Once back in the UK, he was told by the club he wanted to join that he'd need to demonstrate good airmanship to one of their instructors before being allowed to rent their aircraft. I assured him this was normal, but the school was a little honest and said, based on the last few US trained PPLs, it could be anything between 4-8 hours before being signed off (I'm probably opening a different can of worms there).

He went to a different flying club nearby, only to be told again that they would want a check flight to see how he flew before agreeing to rent to him.

Not wanting to burn the cash he'd saved, he decided to buy into a syndicate. "Sooooo, you've got a shinny new licence, you've never flow in UK airspace, and you want to fly our aircraft". Last I heard, he was looking for somewhere to get "some hours" or he wouldn't be able to re-validate based on hours flown.

TPP

[PA28161]

AOPA

Apparently AOPA teach and examine in PPL theory see abstract below from their site but they are not, as far as I know an ATO

PPL Ground School available in Central London.

Following the popularity of our courses, AOPA are pleased to advise that a further evening programme of PPL Ground School will be run at our Central London offices.

Starting on 4 October 2016, AOPA will be running ground school for ab-initio pilots. The School will take place at the AOPA offices at 50a Cambridge Street in Victoria and will take place each Tuesday and Thursday evening from 7 till 9pm on the dates shown below. The AOPA office is just 5 minutes walk from Victoria Station.

All 9 subjects required for the PPL (aeroplanes), will be taught over a period of approximately 70 hours. The lecturer is Adam Winter, a highly qualified and experienced flying instructor who works for the Flyers Flying School at Elstree.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE DETAILS

The next programme for 2016/17 is:

Air Law October 4, 6, 11, 13
Operations and Procedures October 18, 20
Human Performance and Limitations October 25, 27
Revision November 1
Exams November 3

Navigation November 8, 10, 15, 17, 22, 24
Meteorology November 29 December 1, 6, 8, 13, 15
Revision December 20
Exams December 22

[S-Works]

They use the approval of the GRE that teaches the courses. As I said right at the start you can do the theory which whoever you want. There is a guy called Derek Davidson with an great reputation who specialises in PPL ground school.

However as I also said, ensure that your school is happy with it. As a rule we prefer that our students do the theory with us and many other schools do the same. We do get a few that turn up with the theory passes already signed off which we accept but if you are doing the course from zero with us then we insist that includes the theory.

[Whopity]

Can't speak of CPL/ATPL stuff as I've never seen them,

Historically, the commercial exams had two sources, the Air Registration Board for Technical Exams and The RAF for Nav Exams, produced until 1974 by the College of Air Warfare. This was the origin of the two exam groups which the CAA took over in 1974. The material remained largely unaltered, except for the addition of new material and the removal of some questions that were grossly out of date. The quality of these questions was questioinable and with the advent of the JAA and a European Database, there was an opportunity to produce an examination system that was fit for purpose however; the process adopted lead to an even greater reduction in relevance and quality. With no requirement to write new questions, the CAA disposed of its Ground Examiners, with the result that there was nobody left responsible for PPL exams, which did not fall within the European remit and for the past 20 years has been a secondary, unfunded task.

In the entire history of aviation, there has never been a training analysis to determine what a pilot needs to know; consequently, the examination system has never had any meaningful purpose.

I was involved with the initial vetting of EASA ATPL exam questions designed to replace the JAA database, but again not at PPL level. The quality of these new questions was the lowest I have ever encountered; fortunately, they ran out of money and the project was abandoned.

The BMAA were quick to grasp the nettle, they wrote their own exams, gave them to the CAA who were happy to adopt them. The CAA are not funded to produce PPL exams, so there is an opportunity for industry to present them with a working solution, which I am sure they would be happy to adopt.

[BEagle]

...and which is what is being done!

[anotheradam]

Correction to your comment

"Apparently AOPA teach and examine in PPL theory see abstract below from their site but they are not, as far as I know an ATO"

Hello,
I teach the PPL Ground School course at AOPA. You are correct that AOPA is not an ATO. I work with Flyers Flying School at Elstree, an approved ATO, and the AOPA classroom in Victoria is a registered and CAA approved classroom and examination centre.
It is AOPA, we'd not have got that wrong!
Adam Winter
Our new course starts on March 9th at AOPA in Victoria London

[Flyingbadge]

I was struggling with the ground exams (not great at motivating myself for self study) and my school were happy for me do my ground school with Adam (anotheradam).