Ok, following on from my earlier remarks here are my thoughts.
I should say at the outset it is a very long time since I did my PPL, and maybe there have been huge changes since then - if so please forgive me.
What’s in the name? Well the title sets the scene and I think the navigation module should be re-branded “flight planning and navigation”.
I think the way in which the theoretical components integrate with the practical components should be reviewed. I recall that AICs and NOTAMS et al were covered in air law, but there was very little integration between air law and the flying I did with my instructors. As a result their practical inclusion in flight planning largely passed me by. I had no idea where I could obtain this information (other than the club notice board) and nor what information I really need to know before embarking on a flight.
Navigating a route starts with checking the NOTAMS, reviewing the forecasts, and considering whether a flight plan might be required. It also comprises formulating an understanding of the route to be followed. This could include the impact of controlled airspace, gliding sites, terrain that may have some effect on the flight, as well as potential diversions. On a VFR flight an important element are the options that might be available when things go wrong - it could be with the weather or with the aircraft. Many PPLs I have flown with have little idea about their options en route, their focus is entirely on getting from point A to point B. Tell them before you go over a ridge line that there will probably be a few bumps and they are amazed, ask them where they are going to go if the engine quits over one of those huge forests in France or over some of the less hospitable terrain in the UK and they have no idea. Had they considered these elements in their route planning they might have considered a very small diversion to avoid these and other problems but it never crossed their minds. In short I would have liked to have spent more time with my instructors understanding what was practically involved in the planning phase of a route I intended to navigate. (Interestingly, exactly the same issues arise with IR and IMCRs, plenty of sound theory, but not much concern with the practical issues of actually flying an airways route sector).
The planning all pulls together with the cross country exercises. Diversions become a relevant tool to solve a potential problem that might have arisen rather than the instructor using the same diversion on the same cross country navex which he flies every time with every student. The instructor has ample opportunity to set off on a route sector in weather which is a mite marginal for the new PPL, point out the cloud base is descending somewhere along the route, even if it isnt by much, and put into practice a diversion. The instructor is equipped to demonstrate the use of a moving map GPS perhaps as part and parcel of the work required on radio navigation because after all each is surely as relevant an alternative navigational tool. The instructor now has an opportunity to fail the GPS or the VOR so the student has an appreciation that whatever kit is involved it might stop working. There is also an opportunity to look at how a practice call might be made to D and D or how a RIS service might be used to enable the student to get himself “out of trouble”.
In short these are all practical skills that come together to comprise more than blindly navigating a route from A to B and which comprise the foundations of airmanship.
Whirly if I were an instructor and wanted to know the answer to the question you pose I probably wouldn’t ask here.
Your audience are those PPLs who have just gone through the system. No one ever bothers to ask them. (And I appreciate there are a few on here). Once they have passed there PPL they are cast to the school rental market (some good, some less so).
If I were really interested I would prepare a questionnaire for every one of my students and “insist” they returned this to me a year later. I ask my school to do the same thing for every student that passed through. I would want to know where they felt the syllabus had been weak a year on. I would want to know if they were using GPS units, and if so what problems they had encountered and if not, why not. I would want to know how their flying aspirations had changed form starting their PPL to a point a year on because one of the reasons so many PPLs give up just might be because they finish their PPL without the confidence to go anywhere. If that is true it is partly because the navigational element of the syllabus has failed.
I finish with recounting a couple of pilots I met very recently. They had been flying for a couple of years. They didn’t stray too far from home but clearly very much enjoyed their flying. The one said to me I have always wanted to go to the West country - after all it is not too far away. So why don’t you said I - it’s a great trip. Ah well said the other there is that area of airspace to the west of Bournemouth - it looks very complicated and there doesn’t seem to be any easy way of transiting it - does there? It has always put us off.
They had no idea how to plan and navigate a route to the west country - hardly France or even Europe, not a drop of sea involved - not even Scotland or Wales - just a bit of good old England.