Send Clowns
I agree re pay; my instructors were paid between zero and £10/day plus £20/hr usually for flying. But a student doesn't normally have the option to adjust the pay of his instructor. Most JAA training, especially PPL, has to be done under an FTO, so no way to use a freelance instructor (anymore).
Radio navigation and GPS is a good backup
That shows you do a different sort of flying to me. Backup for what? Obviously you mean map reading (dead reckoning). Not if you are in IMC or above an overcast layer, in marginal vis (3k is PPL legal but not "VFR" navigable unless it's one's own back yard), over featureless terrain, over a lot of water, or are "unsure of position" to use the official euphemism for having lost the plot due to too many villages/lakes/roads looking too similar, forgot to wind up the stopwatch, etc
I also don't fancy EVER being unsure of position in certain foreign countries. Screens do go blank so one carries a 2nd GPS.
Looking at the PPL training scene from the point of view of a relatively intelligent newcomer (has to be to do the exams, for starters) if he is on enough money to be able to fly long-term, he probably drives a car with a GPS in it, has been using calculators for some 30 years, and the whole scene does look like something out of a Battle of Britain movie.
Someone mentioned continual training. Yes, I like to fly with experienced pilots who fly IFR for real, not ATPL hour builder PPL instructors who, unsuprisingly given the nature of their job, rarely get a chance to venture past the nearest crease in their chart
These different positions are what feeds Pprune threads and they will never be reconciled.