In 2008 I was hired to provide military-style training to a middle-eastern country. The training was done in Oz to the same syllabus as the Army Aviation School, but the end aim of the course was not to pass an Oz licence, rather to satisfy the Standards Manual. Their final wings award would be back in their country. Groups of 6 arrived every 10 weeks, and it all started out fair dinkum.
Working on the 3rd course, the Head of School and I decided that one particular student was never going to make it, and should be sent home. The training reports fully justified it, so away he went, in a flood of tears. The following week, a student off the 4th course met the same fate - scrubbed. We thought that this would inspire the lads to work a bit harder (they were lazy boys). Bong! Wrong!
A directive arrived from their country, demanding that all money spent on those two be repaid, because it was our failure to get them through the course. Rumbles of contract cancellation and all that. Well, the owner of the school could see his personal money tree losing its leaves, so after paying their money back, the directive was issued: nobody will ever fail this course. All ground school exams were completely dumbed down, flights were repeated to try to reach the standard, but if they didn't, the trip sheets were magically changed after leaving the instructor's computer. The students caught on very quickly, and their attitude towards learning evaporated. They would fly a sortie, but we weren't allowed to test them on that sequence again on the next flight - a complaint to Daddy back home (Daddy was a general) led to a rocket coming through the system for the instructor who was insisting on standards being met. The new junior instructors were preferred, as they hadn't yet developed a sense of standards.
The whole place became a joke, a sausage factory turning out sub-standard sausages, who fortunately never flew in Oz without an instructor. The factory is now defunct. Chief sausage-maker lives in Scotland now. But it could have been so good.