Anecdotally, we need to stop it with the 2 nights a week thing. Nobody else does. And with the pressure on young people through the current education system to perform, many young people simply don’t have the time.
I would argue that dropping to 1 night a week may also help address our staff recruitment/retention issue - which is probably a far bigger thing to fix than getting teenagers through the door.
I think it was NCVO which did a survey of volunteers and found people have less time to give post-covid. For staffing that means less time for cadets - but also, less willingness to spend time at cadets doing bonk admin tasks for the sake of doing admin tasks.
Definitely not!
Indispensable in a lot of ways but not much use in others - but the same goes for all CFAVs depending on their availability, interests and expertise.
Just saying that in all these things stats don’t always tell the whole story
i recall being a Cadet and some VIP (could have been town mayor but feel it was more important/influential than that) came to Squadron for possibly an AFI or whatever it was back then to and said “the Air Cadets are one of this country’s biggest best kept secrets found on people’s doorstep”
and i have to say he was right then and still is today.
in training courses at work there is always the ice breaker “tell us something you do outside of work” and the obvious answer for me is the ATC - and almost without fail at breaktime someone will come up to me and ask “so what is the Air Cadets”?
to which i explain - think of the Scouts but with an RAF theme and they get it.
I have said it before but as Scouts (and by that i include everyone from Beavers through the Explorers) have Troops in villages they are formed within a community.
Squadrons are part of a town, and so are not seen by the community in the same way, and certainly not by the surrounding villages - my Dad was a Cadet but it wasn’t until some school friends mentioned it to me and I talked to my parents about going to the open day did my Dad mention he was a Cadet - he never knew there was a Squadron 3 miles away in the local town and he had prior knowledge of the Corps…!
I don’t know what the solution is but i think we lack behind the St Johns Cadets in terms of Joe Public understanding and knowledge of the Cadet Forces - with perhaps the old and bold generation believing this is such a grammar/boarding school thing running CCF
I am sure there are some Squadrons who are well established in their communities and likely have a flood of interest when there is a recruitment opening but the Squadrons I have been on and their neighbours they are “just another specialist youth group” you sometimes see
I know. I’m like a broken record. Only more annoying.
I was about to say “I’ve stopped attending two nights a week”… But then looked at my diary and realised I’ve done three nights a week most weeks for the last 3 months!!!
But seriously, as an organisation, we should probably look at rationalising what we do and/or how we do it. One night “On parade” and one night virtual delivery of classification training on a regional or national basis - delivered by qualified competent people passionate about their subject areas rather than half hearted deliver of classification training recognising it’s “Open book” end point assessment and doesn’t lead to a BTEC anymore being just one example.
I know the sea cadets tend to do two night but it varies between units. I think it’s because during good weather & boating season, one night is at unit doing classroom stuff the other night is off unit in a lake rowing/sailing/kayaking
What I thought was interesting is that CCF(RAF) is up 32% (2609) and ATC down 4% (1430). So the total number of RAFAC cadets is up, but CCF now make 25.5% of RAFAC.
Is CEP hurting the ATC, or is the ATC suffering from other factors? Not an easy one to unpick. But the total number of RAFAC cadets is still up 1200 or so.
It depends how you work with them. I encourage to double hat between CEP CCFs & ATC so they get a best of both.
I think CEPs tend to hurt like service but speaking to a couple of the CEP SSIs they don’t want to have an RAF section because they don’t want to have to use Bader.
What it won’t really affect is staffing but one of the things I hear banded about the CCF by the ATC is that the ATC is hoping to get more staff to prop them up rather than try & address their own issues.
One thing I notice with a number of CCFs particular RAF sections is that they have “extra CCF” so a parade night can be three hours of training compared to the one & half of the ATC. It also helps the CCF that they have qualified teachers delivering some of the training.
