That sounds like a seriously flawed statement. Recruiting have just told me that if there are less slots, they weed more people out at their end through minimum education requirements/medicals/interviews etc. Surely if you are meeting the requirements/standards during flight training, they shouldn't be scrubbing you?
Numbers at BFTS now are exactly the same they have been for the past few years... But the requirement for pilots has decreased... It would seem that my above statement is correct but I could be wrong.
In 2007, a BFTS course made it through with zero scrubbings and the average pass out rate was rather low. Recently BFTS courses have been decimated to the extent where in some cases fewer than half the original course make it to 2FTS. Which once again adds creedence to my previous statement. And once again I could be wrong, could be that the standard of people going through BFTS has declined.
Could be very many different factors involved.
But the intake has been rather steady for a while now, yet the output has dropped because the services don't need as many pilots.
DFR don't adjust their requirements either. Medical standards, Aptitude testing and interviews have always remained the way they are. It is the respective Directorate of Personnel and PSA's responsibility to decide how many people go on to commence pilot training. DFR just provide the meat at the beginning of the chain and the above agencies are responsible for quality control (Continuing with the sausage factory metaphore)
WRT Sandunes post: Absolutely 100% correct. Times have changed from those days but that doesn't mean the services can't change their standards in order to adjust the output. Happens all the time depending on demand.