Whopity, I think you figure of typically 12 to 15 hours is correct with a good instructor and school, when I taught on RAF scholarships, they had to solo by ten hours, it required good planning, a put the instructor under pressure, as none of us wanted to chop the students, I don't recall chopping anyone on the 10 hour rule, but they would good calibre students who had been though OASC selection.
The problem is that I have come across many schools with students not going solo until 25+, really down to poor sylabus planning, instruction in unsuitable conditionm, frequent change of instructors and occasionaly poor aptitude. I did take this up with a few CFI's that if we were not sending students solo between ten and fifteen hours then we were doing something wrong, but it always fell on deaf ears. In part the problem was instructors getting paid by the hour, so some instructors flying was not always in the students students best interest, many down to wx conditions.
To add to your point, I did once take on a student, from an instructor who had to suddenly leave (he was knocking of one of his student's wife). I carefully checked his training record and if there was no medical in place. I did a couple of sorties with the student, he was at the circuit stage, I checked to see if he knew all the emergencies and I was completely happy with his flying.
So in the debrief, I told him that he had flown really well, and said it was a pity he didn't have a medical as I would have sent him first solo, to which he said he had already been first solo! In disbeif I checked his log book against the tech log and he had indeed been solo without a medical. His training records were incomplete included the first solo. I Felt this needed to be reported as a MOR with the CAA, but my CFI said we should keep quiet..
To add to any other requirements in the UK, in the past some schools required the student to have passed air law, there is nothing wrong with that, in the above example that might have helped, as the instructor clearly did not know what he was doing.
Last edited by Homsap; 9th Aug 2017 at 11:20.