I was told a couple of times during my PPL(A) that I'd probably be going solo soon; in both cases I then started messing up my landings. It was probably nerves; on the other hand, I'd been at it a lot of hours (relatively speaking!), everyone else was asking me if I'd gone solo yet, and I suspect any instructor would have felt I needed some encouragement along those lines. And if the instructor is an FI(R), the students needs to do a check ride with an FI anyway. Yes, the instructor can say: "I'd just like you to fly with the CFI now", but students aren't stupid; they KNOW why!
Now, when it came to my PPL(H), I broke all the unwritten rules! My instructor, who believed in making his students confident (to too great an extent IMHO) told me I'd just done really, really, really well. And I, definitely OVER confident by now, said: "Thanks; when do I get to go solo then?" I think his jaw literally dropped. And the next week, I went flying with the CFI....and messed up my takeoffs and landings.
OTOH, if an instructor had just told me to go solo, I might have refused, out of sheer cussedness; I don't like being kept in the dark about my progress, or ordered around. I like being in some sort of control. I wasn't a 17 year old any more. Did they know this, I now wonder.
The point I think I'm making, a bit longwindedly, is that there are different types of instructors, and different types of students, with different personalities and abilities and needs, and why should there be any absolute rules about this?
As I've said before, complicated business, life.
