zimm, it's not an NHS survey. Read the link, and you'll see more. The UK infant feeding survey is respected internationally as being sound, comprehensive, independent and as near-accurate as you can get with something like this. These are mothers - 9000 of them, IIRC - asked every 5 years about their recent feeding experiences. There is no reason to think soreness is dramatically under-reported.
I don't know of any cover ups - I do know that we may have actually less than 2.5 hours - I only ever have 2 hours - to teach about bf. We aim to help a class understand something of how bf works, what to expect from their baby's behaviour (in an attempt to prepare them for babies who feed unpredictably and often), bring out some misunderstandings and myths (this is usually a class who have no knowledge of bf at all, and often what they do know is unhelpful - such as babies feed every four hours, or you can't eat tomatoes, or breastfed babies are always clingy, or parents need to ignore their baby at night or they will never sleep through.....all true and recent examples of what parents come to a class 'knowing'). Just unpacking the unhelpful stuff could easily take a whole class. Then we have a lot of questions about bras, breast pads and pumps - people love talking about equipment and what they can buy - which we try to minimise, as again you could spend too much time on it.
badger, the class you saw sounds typical. But we don't have a totally free hand about what to include, because it would be imperative to talk about positioning and attachment, how and why breastfeeding works best if it is responsive to the baby (and not to the clock), and to help parents think about where they will get help and support. Yes, you would also expect to hear something about how you know bf is going well, and something about how long to bf for, their feelings about bf in front of others, different positions. Needs of fathers are always included, I would say, too, as a typical class includes fathers who worry they are being excluded, and at least one mother who thinks it will be easy to express half the feeds from day 1 to allow him to share the feeding, or easy to start off half breast half formula.
Try getting everything I have written about in this post into a 2-2.5 hour class. We do it, or at least the better ones among us do it, and it's a real skill.
Sometimes, women do not always remember what they have heard in a class. All bfcs have the experience of reading an evaluation which asks why they did not cover x, y, or z....and they absolutely did! That;s not to say I don't accept what people sometimes say about the bf class. But to be honest I really don't believe all of it.