talking with my FI hat on, personally I do feel that doing a practice is of use to a new student before he goes off on his first solo nav. As others have said would you rather he get lost and carry on blundering into SS/GW or know what D&D could do for him and give them a call? Though I do have to admit that the idea of having a separate frequency for practices is a very good one so leaving 121.5 for genuine calls. I've was lucky enough to do a TC visit not long ago and sat with D&D for the best part of an hour seeing how their end works and asking lots of questions. Obviously the topic of whether or not they get fed up with GA calling practices all the time came up and I was emphatically told that they positively welcome all they calls they get. The RAF staff get rotated around the different mil units in TC every few months so they always have someone in training at all times so need the traffic. The day I was there I arrived around 1pm and they hadn't had any calls all morning (admitibly a rainy weekday)! Yes ok that doesn't particularly help you guys monitoring 121.5 in the air, but if the controllers can't train due lack of live traffic there wouldn't be anyone validated on the position...