Its meant to be for traffic around an airfield not for a group to use where ever they like on cross country's Gliders also have there own frequency for gliding sites which again is used as "there frequency"
There is also a myth out there that if you use the gliding and the microlight frequency you don't need a RT license.
The fact of the matter is with students, a big problem is they are scared to use the radio and speak on it. They think that who ever they are talking to is going to record and report them for ****e RT. When the worst thing that going to happen is that if a fellow student hears them they might take the piss. Give them to scottish to speak to honestly. They all have a knack of calming the student/insecure pilot down and getting the required info out of them without injecting a terminal fear of talking on the radio.
Maybe its because the instructors arn't that comfy speaking on the RT and don't want to sound like a chump in front of the students. So they tell the students not to talk if they can help it as well.
Well to be honest all fixed wing instructors are the same with only 200 hours under there belts. Give it a week or two talking to everyone and you will forget you were ever stressed about it.