ralph, very true. The phrase at the time was brief-monitor-debrief.
if the honest opinion was asked of instructors....they would be gone in a heart beat
I met the students on my course for welcome drinks on the Sunday night. We chated to them and eventually left.
As soon as I could out of the car park Mrs PN and I wrote down our assessments of who would pass and who would fail. We also put them in order. There was no conferring and we sealed the lists in an envelope.
Of 7 only 3 passed all phases. Mrs PN never served but her assessments from a couple of hours in the bar were identical with mine and we were spot on.
I think in the 70s an Army psychiatrist reported on this phenomenon: that experienced instructors could identify successful students and spent far more time proving that the other students could not meet the grade.