Slopey it was like that 10 years ago and if you were unlucky you could see both faces of the school while you were there. All it took was something to piss AT off and all hell would let loose. He would start wandering around the school wearing his gun and abusing customers. I had two weeks of calm and getting through things and the last week was murder. Thankfully I had the bulk of it done so they couldn't screw me over unlike some of the others that turned up that week. If I hadn't seen the change I would be on pprune to this day sticking up for them.
The instructor bit is well and truely a luck of the draw thing. I had a CFII good un but then towards the end of the three weeks ended up with some ******** from Riddle who thought you could teach PPL by demonstrating spinning from 3000ft every lesson.
From my experence and postings on pprune nothing has changed. Some students have a good time and enjoy themselves Some students its hell on earth. As for the ratio between the two I don't have a clue when I was there the majority didn't have a good time that last week. 15 of us sitting upstairs listening to AT shouting, swearing and banging on the wall at whoever was next in the Q for the RT test. The pass seemed to be being able to put up with being yelled at until you eventually got cleared to land. I didn't like to tell him it was meant to be a FISO airport we were going to so technically they couldn't clear us for anything.
My instruction turned out to be not very good. When I went on to do a CPL and FI course I discovered large chunks of the syllabus hadn't been covered in relation to navigation, diversions and emergency exercises. And the stalling was taught by hanging in the stall using the rudder to haul the wings up when they dropped. Which isn't the way to do it.