Maybe Both
OK here is my confession, as a reluctant creamie QFI on the Hawk in 1982 I am willing to admit I was an awful instructor but this was an era when the RAF appeared to want steely eyed pilots.
Why? Because the Cold War was real and they, the Russians, never rolled into Germany because there were people on our side who would have nuked them into the stone age. Later on I was part of that role.
Why were RAF QFIs hard? Because the pace of training and the demands of flying and operating current 1982 fast jets was very high. My first student, Paul Gay, died on the other side of the airfield when things went wrong on finals and the board found that his QFI had stalled, others were not so sure.
So it boiled down to this, if there was doubt over the ability of a student pilot to proceed in fast jet training they were chopped. Paul Gay is a name on a piece of silver in a dusty cupboard in the mess and those that were chopped live on.
I was a better instructor later on when on a third tour at Valley.