The first objective of such sentiments should be to have ATPL groundschool accredited under the auspices of the Futher or Higher Eduication Funding Council. In the same way that the theoretical and classroom taught parts of training to be a sparky/plumber/accountant are funded by the two councils.
Essentially this is how your local Technical College is funded. It is nonsensical to draw a distinction between classroom work for an ATPL exam and classroom work for an Accountancy exam.
Members of the two funding councils have candidly admitted as much to me.
If this objective were achieved then at least you might save a couple of grand on tuition costs.
I can't be bothered to organise such a pressure group but if someone wants to pick up the idea and run with it here then they would have my full support.
Initial actions would probably involve getting together a support groups of Wannabes and perhaps some groundschool owners (Alex, Paul, Malcolm perhaps..?) and making the Education Department clarify the situation.
There are no votes in free training for airline pilots so it will never happen. Nor should it in my opinion. It takes 7 years of expense and no income to become a GP and then you are capped at about £66,000 a year. It takes a year to train as a pilot and after 7 years you could well be in the LHS of a jet earning more than a GP. There is no shortage of pilots looking for work so market forces are the best policy it seems.
WWW