Here's the thing.
More than ever, flight training is about mitigation , and for you older folk who did it the old way, yes -now at times to the detriment of basic skills and knowledge - sometimes the syllabus is presented in such depth that it misses simple key elements, or is simply not taught correctly due to being too detailed and confusing in the first place. The reality is that at its core it hasn't changed all that much, just the wording and presentation has become a wankfest.
It Still comes down to the individual instructor and his or her ability to convey the stuff that actually matters while still reaching the required
tolerances as well as the "non technical skills" (Airmanship FFS!)
I don't have much
recent knowledge on the organisation involved here, but what I do know is that it was, in the past, renowned for setting extremely high standards of its staff and students. I can't see any reason for it to have changed.
For all you guys pointing fingers who
have not instructed, then you should simply walk away from this discussion. For any student to get to the first solo Nav, they have jumped through plenty of hoops, and proven to a relatively experienced instructor and a flight examiner that they are capable of dealing with many types of emergencies and situations.
The thing is, you cant show all situations to a student (you couldn't if you flew with them for 5 years), and you have to make an educated guess based on what you do see. There is always some element of risk but you've just spent the previous period of time trying to mitigate them. Perhaps a student is strong, and during the sign outs, They're able to discuss the wx and what they would do in various scenarios, but faced with a situation out of the box the worse happens?.
It will all come out in the wash, as no pilots paper work will be more in depth and recent as a student pilot.