New CFI here.I am not thrilled with my flight schools approach to pilot training. Basically, what happens is that students show up to their flight lesson and the instructors will just ask them "what would you like to work on today?" and the students will state what they want to do and the instructs say "ok sure" and that is what they do for their flight lesson that day.

Many of these students have over 60 hours and are still not done with their PPL. I've asked some of them if they are using a syllabus and none of them are. This is a very unstructured approach to pilot training and once I start getting assigned students I would like to have a structured syllabus to work through with them.

I did not create a syllabus during my CFI training, only lesson plans. I am looking at commercially available syllabus options but all of those are custom tailored to the specific pilot training kit that the commercial vendor sells.

I recall the FAA used to offer a suggested syllabus in either the AFH or the PHAK, but I can not for the life of me find it now. I would really like to use a syllabus that is straightforward, comprehensive, and sticks to the FAA reference material. Something that would included assigned readings prior to each lesson.
Can any CFI's out there share the syllabus they use?

 

My flight school is on the Cessna King School Program which has a pretty good syllabus. That being said, it's pretty common for it to take beyond 60 hours to finish a PPL.

 

Not every student will be recommended for the PPL Practical Test within the minimum hours as specified under CFR 61.109 Aeronautical experience.

Students train training at non 141 enterprises will migrate from one instructor to another. Thus additional hours required to reach the bar. Even with a curriculum, students acquired by you, additional hours may be required due to poor techniques, habits, deficiencies acquired from prior training.

You should recommend a proven curriculum at the place you are instructing, with appropriate records. Transition to another instructor, due to illness, or moving on, can be smoother. However with no structure, you may find it an uphill effort to have all instructors follow the curriculum of choice.

 

Starting out your instructing adventure at a school without a proven syllabus can be a unique challenge. A school I used to teach at quite some time ago used a program created by Ralph Butcher, available at sky roamers . com (stupid link doesn't seem to work when typed out). A competing fight school uses Jeppesen syllabi and another recommends coursework by Rod Machado. There are many out there, which I'm sure your googling has uncovered. The program by Butcher was pretty in depth "old school" style and in the beginning, can seem to take forever to build up to the "fun stuff". YMMV. Good Luck.