I was lucky enough on a canceled days flying to have a brief from a visiting CAA exam callsign. Which as you might expect was listened to by students and instructors alike.
The MEP stall recover using the power, only dropping the nose to straight and level attitude was explained as the following.
The recovery is started on the activation of the stall warning system which indicates you are approaching the stall and not actually in the stall. So as such all you are doing is speeding up in a flyable condition. And as such dropping the nose below S&L is an over reaction. The lecture was over 4 years ago now but he did then go on to cover the case of engine failure while performing the manover. If the engine fails before minimum control airbourne is reached you apply full rudder and retard the good engine just enough to remain in control and then advance the power to max as you speed up past any limiting speeds.
In a clean stall to the onset of buffet he was an ex-RAF chap so briefed the RAF standard minimal unload recovery which Dan is doing a fair job explaining.
As Dan said earlier how on earth can Joe Bloggs be expected to know what they are doing when all the major subjects ie PFL's, stalling, standard checks etc are all debated on this forum with very varied opinions on the methods. Joe is going to go from one check ride where he is told to stuff the nose down to one where he will get re-trained if he drops below the horizon.
If the CAA payed someone in the know to write briefing sheets on the topics brought up on this forum and endorsed them as the "method to use" and sent them to all FI's and CRI's and publish them at the back of lasor's for the rest it would be a relatively cheap way of getting some sort of standards in the UK.