Ravi,
If I may add to Stuart's observations.
It is clear from your questions, that you are used to, and have been raised on, a diet of academic and training rigour.
Unfortunately, practical flying training (including the theory aspects) lies toward to the other end of the spectrum. Due, I suggest, to the early history of flying, such academic work as was done generally was external to aircraft coalface activities. England, for instance, from which we derive our flying history, was a bit of a late starter in aeronautics and, should one go back to pre-WW1 days, was significantly behind the good folk in Germany, especially Prandtl and his colleagues at Göttingen. Another of the early difficulties related to poor communications which encouraged the somewhat parochial development of quasi-theoretical ideas as to why things occurred with these new-fangled aeroplane contraptions.
One result was that a relatively large body of non-rigorous tales developed and became endemic in training activities. Some of these ideas have proved to be incredibly resistant to change in the face of academic knowledge. For example, in various, non-academic pilot training material, you will find ideas relating to matters such as the development of lift. You may see stories which purport to suggest that airflow above/below a wing somehow meets up at the trailing edge. While this is correct for the nil lift case it is, otherwise, arrant nonsense. Likewise, you will see stories suggesting that the Coandă effect is a material component of lift generation. Actually, no, albeit that a corollary observation is much the same as aspects of what we see in aerofoil section airflow (which are explained by considerations not related to Coandă's work). The sad thing is that the scientific world has had a good handle on lift for around 100 years but most of that still hasn't filtered through to pilot training.
And so it goes on ...
The end result is that you don't find the sort of rigorous syllabus detail in flying training that you are used to from academia. I can recall, as a young chap many years ago, the civil theory syllabus consisted of a very rudimentary, non-detailed, list of topics in the then ANO 40. The current iteration of that document's lack of detail is in the Part 61 MOS. Unfortunately, that "syllabus" is about the state of play and, largely due to the lack of detail, we see the proliferation of various strange ideas in theory work.
I guess the important question for the bulk of student pilots is "does this really matter" ? The answer is along the lines of "probably, not really". The pilot does not need to be an aeronautical engineer, aerodynamicist, or physicist. Rather, he/she needs to have a bit of an idea of what is going on but, far more importantly, be able to apply that rudimentary knowledge, in a practical manner, to the task of causing an aeroplane to do its thing while maintaining a reasonably constrained risk profile.
A consequence for university technical graduates, is that we just have to put up with the system's procedural deficiencies. That is not to say that folk who wish to get more of the detailed story can't do so - there are numerous rigorous texts available, many on the net for no cost, which will provide detailed entertainment for hours.
However, and unfortunately, sometimes the examination questions perpetuate the historical fallacies and the knowledgeable candidate must be able both to know the correct story and the not-quite-right story required for the examination pass.
Just a fact of life, I guess, unfortunate though it may be.
When I asked the chief examiner at CASA in relation to this, the reply was there is only a MOS and no syllabus and therefore my dilemma is this.
There is no syllabus in the rigorous sense that you seek. In present parlance, the MOS is what we have and that is pretty superficial.
When generating an MCQ,
I presume you are relating this back to the AMC MCQ examinations. While I have no experience of that, I can only suggest that what one might see in those examinations, and the CASA examinations, are at opposite ends of the rigour spectrum.
The classic point is the question is what I mentioned earlier in an enquiry, what is the best information source for doing the initial inspection,
Unfortunately (and this is more pointed since the rule changes last year), often you won't find a single reference to address a question. Hence one needs a catholic knowledge of the full suite of aviation regulations and ancillary documents to find something akin to an answer. Even then there are internal CASA determinations which further muddy the waters. Just the way things are, I'm afraid.
if there is an answer disagreement with the CASA answer
Unfortunately, that is one of the principal difficulties with which we are faced. We have little or no visibility of the CASA view on life. In years gone by, the system was far better, in that the examinations were made available to the Industry after they had been used. Further, there were periodic Post Exam Review Meetings where DCA (as CASA was, then) could be challenged on question integrity.
Im just really baffled by the fact there is no actual syllabus. If questions were generated from a know source(s) , then the source of question and answer is able to be checked.
Many of us echo your plea ... just a burden with which we must contend, I fear.
