Does anyone have any idea what minima this school work to? Evidently one of the crew was qualified to be operating the flight IFR, but in an SEP if your one engine stops turning you can still be IMC but unable to maintain IFR until you become VMC. Then you need enough altitude/time to find a place to put down safely.
Allowing transition from instruments to visual that's about a minute in a PA28 if you have 1000ft to play with when you drop out of the muck. Assuming they didn't just blunder into a hill they might have had this space pretty much anywhere else enroute, but it wouldn't be good VMC.
IFR in a single needs a bit more thought and risk evaluation than looking at departure and destination.
Hopefully the AAIB get the answers to why this tragic event happened.