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I'd actually argue the opposite; Ash is the one who inspired Sceptile to keep improving and taught it whatever methods it continued using to train when he wasn't there to directly supervise it.His Sceptile was still a Grovyle at the Hoenn League and had a case for being his 3rd strongest behind Glalie and Swellow.It apparently got stronger when it came back at the sinnoh league which had nothing to do with Ash.
I think that speaks much more highly of him as a trainer than if his Pokémon stop improving when he wasn't hovering over their shoulder.
And indeed, we see many of his Pokémon regularly continue to make progress without him, learning new moves or gaining more power. Even the lazy Snorlax apparently keeps up it's training off-screen.