I can really understand your frustration here, MEL, but first let me put you right on one point...it is not an FOI who is writing the "competancy based training" syllabus, it is the Transport and Distribution Industry Training Advisory Board. I and many other CFIs and others in the industry have spent hours deliberating over things like "how to measure" a "good" landing. All it is is a way of MEASURING achievement, almost impossible in our industry. Silly, in many ways, but that is the way that all industries are going now and aviation has to keep up.
It does not replace the Day VFR syllabus.
The Oz colleges and TAFEs are merely providing the theory side. Two of my flying instructors are also TAFE PPL and CPL theory lecturers in the evenings.
And you will find that each school does have the means to write its own syllabus in the ops manual, and I know mine and many others goes way beyond the minimums required, especially as I train a lot of UK people and was an instructor there myself for a few years, I have added the two syllabi together to get the best of both. All ops manuals have to detail the school's syllabus and this has to be approved by CASA. So that is already being done. You can't just put "as per the day VFR syllabus" in your ops manual section E!
Totally agree with you about the "sausage factories". Now that Electronic Dick and his cronies at Airservices are getting rid of our ATC at GAAP aerodromes, these people who are taught merely how to pass a flight test, not how to be a Captain (size of aircraft irrelevant), have become a serious safety hazard with their lack of knowledge or regard for MBZ procedures and airmanship. I have had to stop student solo training outside tower hours, as these idiots have made the zone unsafe. I don't want one of my students to be the statistic that makes Airservices and co realise what they've gone and done.
Take heart...there are some of us here who still believe in teaching "airmanship" and all those other old fashioned things!
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