Regardless of whether you consider that the ATPL Theory is beneficial or not to one's professional flying career, I am sure that there is one area that everyone will be in agreement with and that is the appalling state of the the Central Question Bank maintained by the aviation authorities.
Apart from the FACT that many areas of the syllabus itself are out of date and in some areas technically incorrect, the CQB is riddled with questions which do not stay within the limitations of the syllabus; questions with technically incorrect questions and answers; questions with multiple correct options; questions where the author can't even get the answer mathematically correct owing to incorrect formulae used or just plain poor mathematics, etc.
Then you have examinations where the question selection algorithm obviously hasn't been properly checked as it produces far too many annexes to permit the student to complete the examination in the allocated time, or more recently an annex which was actually a landscape diagram printed in portrait format such that only half the annex was available.
For heaven's sake, how can an aviation regulatory authority claim to be efficiently regulating professional licensing when it can't even produce questions and examinations which meet even the most basic of quality standards?
Are their own standards the benchmark that the authority is going to adopt as baseline criteria for all areas of aviation? Excellent, that'll cut my maintenance bills in half...........maybe not, I'd rather stay alive!
It is simply not good enough, especially when you consider the price that examinees have to pay the sit the exams.
Cut the hypocrisy and lead by example.
If an education authority operated by these standards I'm sure OFQUAL would have something to say about it.
Off soapbox, coat on......taxi!