I felt that, after passing my PPL, I had not been 'scared' yet, in the sense that I had never encountered weather conditions where I did not feel in control, or had the aircraft do unexpected things where regaining control did not come pretty easily/naturally.
Of course, I would not want to have the proverbial constantly scared out of me as I was going through the course, but it would have been useful to experience, in the relative safety of an instructor by my side, more marginal events which could have taught me a lot about recognising what the limits are - my limits and the aircraft's limits, weather limits etc.
Visibility is a good example. Apart from some short 'hard' IMC training when we were in cloud I think we might have flown some XC down to 7000m sometimes. Solo QC were not taken unless the METARs and TAFs were CAVOK/all the nines. With the license, I can fly down to 3000m and I might well have been tempted to do so and it could have been a very bad idea - 3000m is not a lot - even in s slow spamcan! Yet, how am I meant to know how bad an idea it would really be if I had only ever flown on 9999 days?
Of course, as a fresh PPL it is up to you to gently push your own limits as you gain competence and experience, but I think it would also be good if some of this pushing outside the comfort zone was part of the PPL to begin with.
I'd love to have had to do BPFs 'test'...
B.