Seriously, what place has solo cross country and dual commercial VFR Nav training have in an instrument rating course? By its very nature cir training is all dual and the enroute Nav should be done under the ifr rules and not VFR.
Pretty common at all the schools that do an IR before the CPL. You need 50 (could be wrong there) PIC before sitting the test, so this needs to be done. You also need to do the night experience if you want to be able to use the MECIR to it's full extent without already have a NVFR.
Kelpie, with this and your words about one of the cadets I feel you are jumping at shadows. I love your work but take a breath, this is certainly an improvement on J*.