I only hope that the ATPL exams are of some practical good these days. I did the OZ exams in the late 1960's and the subject matter was completely irrelevant to operating any type of aircraft at that time, except perhaps for some of the meteorology topics. I can recall spending an hour calculating the track and distance from Sydney to Nadi by Meridianal parts, interesting but 20 years out of date. Flight planning was also out of the 1940s, mid zone weights etc. Later in the 1980s I did the UK ATPL subjects and they were even more irrelevant except if you had worked for BOAC in the 1930s.
So it was more an exercise in having the endurance to master these outdated procedures. A bit like learning Latin today. I must admit though I did hundreds of PNR and CP calculations later with my first airline job around the Pacific but these were well covered in CPL Nav in any case.