Originally Posted by
btrdux
The flight schools, as they are the organisations (collectively) choosing to compensate instructors poorly.
It's not quite that simple, the flight schools are directly responsible for the quality of pilot output. However the rest of the industry also is to blame for taking on the standard and accepting it, as well as the regulator for allowing the standard to decline. The problem is that we do not live in a utopia, and not even the majority of people want to aspire to be 'the best' at something. This inevitably leads to a situation where once somebody has control over something they will generally get slacker at it as they do it longer, that is standards will wane over time. This will occur until something happens to shock them back into life and work harder, be it a failed test, or worse, an accident. In flying hopefully experience increases as want to improve declines.
The regulator has put in place a lot of 'self regulation' rules. Which sound great, but without direct external monitoring there is no one to say whether the self regulation is working until something bad happens and points a finger at it. The road is a good example, how many of us can be trusted to always stay below the speed limit, without fear of being caught 'speeding'. Fact is highways would have at least half the drivers doing up to double the speed limit if they had no fear of being caught, flying is no different. So it comes back to without direct monitoring of what standard is being delivered by flying schools, that is CASA periodically sitting in on various parts of a students training, the standards will decline over time to a point where safety is questionable, and the driver becomes a fear of the student having an accident (absolute minimum standard), not whether they are competent in all areas. This means a student will get enough training to pass a test, and possibly carry through some fundamental flaw in their training that just needs the right circumstance to uncover. Then you do get an accident at some point in the future, maybe not directly out of training, and could be a thousand hours later, but it just needs the right conditions to expose it.
If all schools have to do better, that then forces them to compete for competent instructors, not just chaff to fill the seats. That in turn will lead to better pay and conditions. Another method would be to make schools legally responsible for a pilots training, and if at some point a pilot crashes due to a flawed technique that can be traced back to the school then the school can be taken to the cleaners. That will then put a legal, and punitive reason for the schools to pay more.