Lately, we had a recently retired student, who entered the training with 55 hours of flying in his logbook documented in a paper cadets logbook, signed by his superior officer and confirmed in his letter of relief from service 1972. He was proud like hell, had a lot of fun - and ended up in having over 120 hours when taking exam and checkride. So, no problem to let these ancient things count, but it may not help reducing the amount of training.