With my students, second sortie is still developing basic IF skills on full panel and partial/limited panel and intro to completing the basic climb,cruise and descent checks whilst still keeping the plane under so sort of control. All of this is done (where possible) in VMC under VFR without reference to any VOR's, ADF's, DME's or GPS. I do, however, avail myself of a traffic service when operating OCAS.
That is fine, but this is a student who had already covered this aspect so should be encouraged to continue with this. It also worries me that when queried about this the instuctors reply seems very offhand
"oh don't worry that's not necessary"
, if the instructor when questioned been saying "We will be covering that when we get to the radio nav phase" that would be fine - though as a good example it would be better if he was at least doing these checks himself.