Dewdrop
I agree 100% that schools might try to string out training. I have never seen one school that cares at all about what happens to a PPL once he/she has got their PPL. Flight planning facilities aren't provided, for example. Unless the PPL is going to spend more money on the night Q or an IMCR, and once they've got that they are definitely not "interesting".
It's a great shame because doing a PPL is pretty tedious and not as much fun as it should be (for all the well known reasons, lessons cancelled due to weather etc) but a student going up with an existing PPL just for a flight would see how much fun it really can be. One could do that with an instructor but the "fun" is then costing you say £100-£120/hour - awfully expensive if one is going to actually go somewhere!! Also an instructor isn't going to show you the
UNAPPROVED things which make flying to real places a whole lot less uncertain e.g. a GPS
But I think one has to come back to the same old theme (here I go again...) as to why the whole business is attracting so many people who cannot afford to do a PPL never mind fly afterwards. This is indirectly responsible for the wreckage that most people train in and fly around, and is directly responsible for the very low currency of the average PPL.
After you've done 100-200 hours, you've forgotten the training anyway. Especially as the great majority of PPLs never even make 100 hours, and those that do usually take years and years to get there. So we are looking at VERY low currency all around.
And pilot currency must have deteoriated compared with say 20 years ago, simply due to the decline of flying as a trendy activity with an interesting social scene.
So.. I would suggest that IF there has been a reduction in competence of PPL pilots (I really don't know if there has; not been around for long enough) then it is much more likely to poor currency than poor training.
It's a pity that nobody from the CAA is officially contributing to these chats because they have all the data at their fingertips.