Safety pilot or not that is the question

[tathepilot]

Perhaps a moot point (not sure what a "mute point" is other than a very quiet one ), but why not work with this student's CFII and see if there are specific things that you can work on with the student. Perhaps the student has difficulty with tracking NDBs and you have some insight that would be helpful.

That way, your sessions get integrated into the CFII's training plan, you get some real experience to prepare you for your CFII and you both can legitimately treat it as training time (although not countable for the 15 hours of required "instrument training" time).

My thoughts exactly!