Deano, not too long a go some of the trainers seemed to be making some kind of political statment and were chopping people left, right and center.
Things like flying 1 knot too slow or fast on OEI go arounds. Even the Fleet Tech Pilot, an ex RAF test pilot, was failed on his recurrent sim.
There was a course of 8, I believe, integrated low hour guys. 7 of them were chopped for reasons such as the above. Of course there is probably more to it than that, maybe, but that was the rumour going around the line for a while.
It's much better now and is more training than testing.
Snigs, it is actually a minimum of 44 sectors with a covering F/O for as long as the training captain deems necessary. Some of the not too recent new joiners have had over 70 training sectors. Not ideal I agree but the company doesn't want to fail you.