Times have changed. Now the big schools want quantity of students, not quality. More fee-paying students and more income. At the sacrifice of of training quality and speed. Classrooms full, planes over-worked and instructors swamped. It doesn't matter if they get a handful of no-hopers, some may eventually scrape through, or will leave of their own accord. Their fees are more important to the school than a few critical comments on this forum when the graduate can't find a job. Reputation means nothing, and money talks.
On my integrated course the ground school phase was the time when most people were chopped. The school took quite a strict stance on failed ATPL exams, and they terminated students with more than four failed exams. The school considered self-sponsored students with more than four failed exams to be totally unemployable. Even with a single failed exam the student had to have a meeting with the HOT. Thankfully I never found myself in that situation, but the school took a firm stance on failed ATPL exams.
It was the flight training phase where it became ridiculous. The school just kept people there who were completely useless, and didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of making it to the line. There were guys who failed the first check-ride three or four times (take-offs, landing, basic circuits and radio calls), and then eventually scraped through because they had a sympathetic examiner. Four or five months later these guys were still limping along with a list of failures as long as their arm. Some were beyond help, but the school just kept pushing them on. In my opinion the school should have been much firmer with failed check-rides, and chopped the hopeless students. Surely these no-hopers would do more harm than good to the school's reputation, especially when they start openly criticising the school after their training, or making complete fools of themselves in sim checks?
A large majority of students got through their training scot-free, and credit to them. My issue is that most of a big school's output are 19 or 20-year olds with very little life-experience, work experience, and little or no applicable soft skills. If I conducted an interview in my old line of work, and came across these typical integrated graduates, my initial judgement would be "privileged background, wealthy parents, private school, wants a bit of instagram candy, and to tell his friends that he's a airline pilot". I trained with these lot, and I know what they're like. Generalised, yes, but that's the way I saw it. A lot want everything around being a commercial pilot, but don't care much about actually doing it.