Are the leading flight training schools to be trusted, eg. CTC or OAA?
You can trust them to some extend as far as not shutting is concerned, however, their integrated courses are hugely expensive and you are paying thousands for a name. They are all well and good when there's jobs going. Both have been known to get many pilots into airlines such as ba and easy but at the moment, they can't give you much more then any other flight school where you could be paying tens of thousands less.
This isn't to say they're a bad school- I've heard the standards are pretty high and their facilities and aircraft are pretty good, but make sure you consider modular and look at other schools. I can't speak from experience but from reading these forums, I've heard Stapleford are pretty good and they are significantly cheaper than OAA.