As of about 3 years ago they did teach it, and I suspect they still do. Is is possible your friend has not reached the navigation section? That would not be unusual after 2 years if he did not fly very much.
On the other hand when I did my nav training at JEFTS/BFT we all gave up using the Dalton Computer, and used mental ded reckoning instead. As taught by the military it was perfectly accurate enough, it was quicker and of course it was good practice for airborne replanning where using the flight computer is not a reasonable option.
What is wrong with "...[gashing] about using Mental Dead [sic] Reckoning and assume a speed of 2 miles per minute...."? As taught in the military system it allowed me to find the corner of an individual field, or a rusty wind pump among trees.
What you should ask is can your PPL holder cope with that level of MDR? This is far more important to safe, competent flying than use of the flight computer. I know that I can almost always beat my students to an answer that is easily close enough, be they PPL students or ATPL groundschool students with PPLs and perhaps many hours.