Which brings me to something you touched on Blobber -
timescales.
Yes, I do struggle to dedicate as much time for each lesson with each student as I personally would like but that's just the nature of the beast. Schools are businesses and are there to make money. Profit margins are tight as I'm sure you are aware so what I can deduce thus far is that for us newer guys the trick is to appreciate the requirement for effective
time management on busy days. Instructing methods aside this is probably the biggest factor in being an effective instructor amongst a busy team of instructors at a busy school. You will soon gauge the level of ability in your ops department when you overrun a slot and will know what you can possibly get away with in terms of overrunning.
My guess is, judging from your comments, that you probably work for one of the chain of schools surrounding London and have realised that money talks alot more than safety much of the time but as you know, it is your job to make sure safety comes first. So, on a practical note: if a defect needs putting in the techlog on a sunday when maintainence are away then so be it. I actually had an ops 'manager' (in the absence of a CFI) tell me once that an aircraft was fit for a lesson when it contained no master compass (it had fallen off it's mounting). A quick call to a CFI down the road soon put that manager right but taking a stand and doing the dreaded techlog entry was tough in the face of commercial pressure from someone who didn't even know what a f*****g master compass is!!
Just do what you can do in the time you get given - it's all you can do - and be safe. Aim to introduce one emergency drill on every other lesson and make them learn their checklists at home. Take the load off yourself - if they want to learn them then they'll learn them - it really is as simple as that mate and all you can do is put them under pressure to memorise them for when you pull a simulated emergency on them unexpectedly (which is jolly good fun!).
VFE.