Many qualified pilots seem to have forgotten the basics. I think these are:
AS SOON AS POWER IS LOST
1. Trim for the glide
2. Identify your landing site
3. Plan and start to fly your approach to the site
ONLY WHEN ESTABLISHED ON THIS APPROACH
4. Look for cause of failure
5. If none found and rectified (such as a passenger pulling the mixture etc)
6. Shut down the engine (to avoid an embarrassing possibly very transient burst of power on short final into your site)
7. Brief pax for actions
8. Make a MAYDAY call
9. When assured of landing and all flap deployed (especially with electric flaps) fuel and electrics off, open doors.
Time without number, I've had people try and make a MAYDAY call straight away, whilst a/c is descending at rapidly increasing speed to no place in particular.
With ref. to No 2 above, I once flew with the CFI of a gliding club, in the tug, with a view to hiring it. No problems, except he thought my abilities in No 2 above were cr*p. He said I needed a few hours in their motor glider, poodling around at 500' looking at fields and the reasons for choosing or not choosing particular sites. Generally on PPL courses, all we have time for are the classroom 5 S's and some demonstration of constant aspect once you've found a 'suitable' field. Of course, what looks good at 2,500' is very different at 500'.
Dunno how we achieve a better standard. With the classic SEP (C152/172 or Piper) the incidence of engine failure are very small compared with other reasons for accidents that maybe it's not worth spending a greater proportion of time on the topic.
I do try to spend a whole lesson just cruising around looking at different fields. Twice recently I've had pilots on a club check a) ignore the 4 runways of a disused airfield directly underneath us in favour of a really small field and b) ignore a 3 mile long beach with the tide out and not a soul on it...
TOO