The fact that the NDB is taught in the initial IF course is IMO irrelevant. I teach IFR and absolutely we do some ADF work for all the good reasons MJ and others have brought up, it builds the core skills of aircraft control and Situational Awareness. But that doesn't change the fact that it is an obsolete approach aid that is the last choice for flying an actual approach.
Operationally I have not done a raw data NDB approach in 20 years. Fortunately North America is much more enlightened than Europe when it comes to the adoption of GPS approaches so there are very few (any ?) airports that have only an NDB approach without also having the option of at least an LNAV approach.
I think Europe is where North America was in the late 1990's. GPS was out there but the regulators had not caught up. At that time Canada had lots of little airports with only NDB approaches. For those, I would make a GPS user waypoint at the runway threshold. This gave me distance to touch down to manage the descent and avoided the requirement to dive and drive, and also gave accurate track guidance. If the ADF needle said I was right of track and the GPS needle said I was left of track than I would turn right. If they both agreed I would enjoy the happy coincidence.
But one thing never changed unlike the bad old days, pre GPS, the aircraft was always lined up with the centreline of the runway when I broke out.
