Aussie Bob I understand the point you're making and I would never suggest that flight instructor is any less deserving than the other professions you're mentioning. I believe your case, being a one man operation, makes it somewhat special too because you're obviously not that 20+ year old instructor who just happens to be there to clock in enough time to get your FO position in the first place. To add some flesh to the bone of my argument, please understand it so:
1. The solo rate covers the aircraft costs and yields a profit, the dual rate covers the instructor fee on top of the solo rate. That's how most people see it. I wouldn't know that time done at dual rate covers utility bills for instance, but I might be wrong.
2. My remark was made in the context of a larger YMMB flight school, one of those with an average of 10+ junior instructors, and where students are akin to cash cows that can be milked and tossed around, where scheduled lessons can be cancelled at short notice to accommodate for TIFs (a classic –
my time is an infinitely flexible resource but yours isn't).
I have a feeling that you nurture both a more personal and professional relationship to your students and that's without a doubt much appreciated. Your students probably graduate with fewer hours too. As for the greedier flight schools, my message to prospective students is: beware of shiny good looks. It is an unfortunate reality that the schools that seem to worry more about their popularity on instagram than the actual value they offer are incidentally also those that thrive these days but that doesn't correlate with quality instruction.
From the student's perspective, I honestly can't really say what warrants being charged dual rate on solo navigations. That's from my personal experience having had instructors that couldn't seem to care less. Solo navigation routes were all predefined, thus allowing little to no degree of freedom, to aerodromes that had been previously visited. Preflight briefings involved minimal input, debriefings were more proforma and often had to be deferred to the following day because said instructor was out flying with another student when I'd return. On that basis, I would
never have accepted to pay dual rate.
I do believe that today's technology could add elements that involve more inputs from the instructor on solo navigations though, e.g. record cockpit audio and video and analyse the footage during debriefing for instance, or have the instructor call you (bluetooth pairing) at 10 nm inbound and follow your broadcasts and joining procedure and be available for queries.
Ultimately, I concur with you that one can't objectively assess a school on the basis of what it charges alone. Unfortunately, there's currently a lack of good metric out there to compare flight schools. Moreover, I understand most people are recreational or private pilots, i.e. one-offs who will ever only be students at a single school, and hence have no means of comparison, and once licenced, won't need one any more. Most reviews are polarised (and often biased with instructors themselves leaving comments) offering no objective insights. Schedules of fees based on CASA minimums are also meaningless. So here's an improvement: schools should dare to advertise the average costs their students incurred to obtain their licence. Better yet would be the distribution thereof. Or the average pass rate on the first flight test attempt. The average difference between flight time and total engine time. Those are the metrics that don't lie and really count in my opinion.