Whirls, I attended the same type of course as described by Flyer43. All bar one of my course soloed in less than eight hours. The one who didn't was chopped at fifteen hours. However we all had FW ppl's and so had the basic airmanship, radio etc under control.
However I keep reading tales on here of students reaching 100 or more hours to PPL solo. Surely these people should be told to take up golf or knitting.