I am reasonably confident that no student of mine will run out of gas because I make my students correlate the dipstick reading to what the fuel gauges are indicating during the pre flight inspection and before fill ups I want the student to tell me how much he/she thinks the aircraft is going to take and I want them to be able to tell me the aircrafts practical endurance with the fuel on board, with a mental estimate using a block fuel flow, before takeoff and at any point in the flight
BPF,
I am in no way critising what you are doing. You are doing far more than any instructor that I ever had, and I'm sure more than most instructors, so you are to be commended for that.
But could I respectfully suggest that you consider extending your fuel checks to getting the student to estimate the fuel remaining onboard after landing. I mean that they work this out afterwards taking into account any time difference from planned time, not that they try to estimate before the flight.
I say this becaues for me, this was when I really started to have confidence in fuel calculations. Leaning consistantly, flying consistant performance figures, I can not pretty much know how much fuel I have onboard to within 5 litres (from a 183ltr tank). This really improved my confidence in fuel planning.
I suppose the only downside is that someday it might encourage someone to push the limits of their fuel if they have too much confidence in the fuel level, but it's more likely to prevent someone pushing on hoping that they reserve they included lasts a bit longer.
dp