Unless the support staff is a competent assistant.
What counts as “competent”, please?
Para 5 & 6 Of ACATI026
1 Like
Erm…I could…but not sure what value that adds given its all on the MT website?
absolutely this from my own personal experience.
i think it was 6 training weekends (be that a single day or both) which were set up over a 15 month period. They were free when i started the process but when it came to the assessment weekend I was no longer free (a family engagement came up) and had to wait until the next course to jump on the back of theirs. I asked if there was any easier way round (tailing a Bronze DofE for example) but it had to be part of a recognised BEL course.
unfortunately i do less personal walking now since getting the qual than i did before due to pressures at home and greater family commitments. in short i put more effort in getting the qualification than time has allowed me to use it since…
and all i want to use it for is day walks. DofE expeds don’t interest me and we have staff keen on unit to cover these, i am happy to do the practical nav training but don’t get the chances like i did prior and during my training
1 Like
No.
I walk for leisure, with my family. We go to places like Malham, and the Peak district. But they have been with a 6 year old girl in tow, and whilst she enjoys the country, anything more than a couple of miles is a challenge, and never in poor weather. Therefore the routes chosen do not count towards being a “Quality Lowland day”.
Aside from the fact that every squadron has to teach navigation, regardless of experience, competence, or personal hobbies, you mean?
I think what you’re actually asking why I personally feel qualified to teach Nav in the open air as opposed to the classroom… Since you ask, I have held a BELA in the past, but was unable to maintain my currency during recuperation from an operation. Plus, I do go walking regularly… So I’d like to think I don’t really have an issue with nav skills?
Not according to the website… Item 1
I don’t want to run day walks, DofE expeds, camping trips or whatever. Or rather I choose to prioritise other activities.
I do want to take my cadets out to a local country park on a parade night, and show them how to take a bearing, how to judge distances on a map, how to correctly interpret contour lines etc. In effect, teach a lesson, but in the field, not in a classroom.
The location I refer to has a yearly festival, in which we take part. PIPE application? no problems. We’ve also been cross country running there. Sports application? No problem. Teach Nav? Run Orienteering? Not without a LLA qualified member of staff.
4 Likes
This.
1 Like
The 20 days can include the first 10 days, it can also include the 2 day training course.
You are in the wrong thread, guys. It was split earlier…
That’s fair enough. But even so, we’re talking about people having to give up 10 weekends as an absolute minimum, and spend around £100 just to go run a 1 hour orienteering course in a local park, or teach them about taking bearings.
If you’re an outdoorsy type person, with the time to do it, it’s not arduous. But if it’s something you’re looking to do because you want to make your training that little bit better, it’s a crazy ask.
Gar… Started typing before it was split!
@Baldrick I don’t suppose you could move these, could you? Pretty Please…?
Damn you all to hell!
2 Likes
Thank you!!! 
with a qualification there is no guarantee that it won’t or can’t either.
i accept the risks could be mitigated, but it would seem only by qualification
a dedicated and competent CFAV who knows how to tick the RA boxes for other events, be that a PiPE, a day trip to a museum or airshow, isn’t deemed competent to consider the risks of walking around the local fields.
(i understand why, and recognise in the eyes of the law that qualifications trump everything, but there is a disproportionate about of effort required on the instructors level to achieve a basic walk)
1 Like
But being realistic we aren’t, we are talking about finding 10 days that you’ve already done in the past (Bronze DofE & Silver DofE is 10 days Lowland Walking for example) and putting them into your D-Log. Doing a 1 weekend training course, then finding 8 more days at you own pace (they only need to be 5 hours in duration so not even a full day) then a weekend for an assessment.
As for cost that depends on your unit, every Squadron I have ever been on has subsidised AT Courses, we expect people to pay their own registration costs £47 and then the committee pays the remainder (£30 a weekend in our neck of the woods).!even if you have to pay the full whack in don’t think £107 for a proper NGB qualification that you can use anywhere is a bad deal.
There may be a good case there for an in-house qual, something akin to a Bronze NNAS - to enable staff to be signed off to teach navigation in local/suburban areas…
4 Likes
agreed.
there is “coach” for shooting which is just a days course, so a suitable trekking equivalent would be ideal for those CFAVs who only have interest in low level nav training
2 Likes
Considering NNAS have now moved to a place of making you have full NGB qualification plus a 1 Day NNAS Tutors Course to deliver Bronze NNAS I don’t see how lowering our qualification status would be a good thing.
Shooting doesn’t allow people to run a range without a proper qualification and I don’t see how AT should be any different.
Now I could see the idea of having a Competent Assistant Course in addition to the ways that already exist to attain that status but to be honest I don’t really see the benefit over the current system.
The real issue is that Staff aren’t being sold how easy the courses actually are to achieve and are being put off by old Crusties who remember CTE and who have never moved on.
It would be interesting - as an exercise in determining the general competence of our people - if we not just looked at stuff that goes wrong, but at our/other cadet forces failure rate.
For myself, as an ML, I think that we ought to be a bit more probing in our analysis of what we need - and I think that analysis ought to feed into our selection and training of staff, and that we should focus far more on selecting and training staff for their role as CFAV, rather than whether they are Officers or SNCO’s (or CI’s) against the standards and requirements of a different organisation with different people, aims and output.
In very broad terms, I take the view that if a member of staff/Sqn can’t be trusted to take cadets to somewhere like Cannock Chase or the Cotswolds for a day’s walk, then they ought not to be a CFAV/Sqn in the first place.
I would certainly say that specialist support from ML’s etc… should be required for a weekend in Snowdonia or the Cairngorms, but for activities which are in themselves low risk in terms on incidence, and as well as effect, I think we’ve gone down a intellectually bereft rabbit hole.
Personally I believe that basic hillwalking should be part of the selection methods we use for determining whether people are useful members of staff or massive throbbers - and that field leadership and management should be part of our staff training syllabus. We should use our ML’s and the like as advisers, trainers a assessors - and for specific stuff as staff. A good model is the old Mountain Arctic Warfare Cadre of the RM: all RM leaders having a basic grounding, provided by MAWC, and able to conduct ‘normal’ operations/training, and ML’s doing the specialist stuff.
2 Likes
No, but the qualification starts to move you along the stages of competence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_competence). You become much more aware of what you don’t know (or didn’t know beforehand).
Every course I’ve been on I’ve come away knowing something that I didn’t know before and being aware of a gap in my own knowledge prior to attending.