I’ve been in cadets for 10 months and when i first joined i i aspired to be a corpral. In the previous parade night we had awards night which i was promoted to first class cadet, i wanted to know if i can become a corpral as a first class cadet and what i need to do to achieve it
You need to be a Leading Cadet.
Great you are aspiring to be a Corporal but you need to be that classification first.
Might be worth asking your OC if he/she has any other additional requirements.
I didn’t like promoting a cadet if they hadn’t been on a week camp of some sorts, appreciate it is more difficult these days due to a lack of places.
Fundamentally, yes - although most try to avoid it, I don’t think there’s anything in writing to say you can’t be a 1CC cpl.
How you achieve it depends primarily on the sqn. I know many require wing NCO courses, some do their own in-house courses, and some just promote without such a prerequisite. Ask your current JNCOs and SNCOs, they’ll be able to talk you through the requirements.
Final point, you don’t get “promoted” to first class, you get “awarded” it. It’s a classification, not a rank (presuming you’re UK ATC, at least)
It is in writing that a cadet has to be a Leading Cadet to be a corporal.
Ah, right - my bad!
It also says that an OC can reduce these requirements by one stage if necessary. So you can have 1st Class Cpl or Leading Sgt’s if you as an OC think it’s necessary. (Example being you’ve got a Cadet who is an exceptional candidate who is not academically gifted.)
I have a list of minimums to be met before you will be considered for promotion which are published on the notice board for all to see. These include, 18 months service, Leading Classification, Bronze DofE, Wing PNCO Course and being trained on any Weapon. (I have given myself small print which enables me to waive 1 element if necessary). Noting overly difficult in there and any Cadet with 18 months service should have most of those things as standard.
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Rank and classifications are not and never been directly linked. I promoted cadets on merit, above all else.
If you wanted to link rank and classification HQAC would need to change the exam system so that not everyone can pass an exam without knowing the subjects properly, the current system of one from two questions being sufficient is all part of the everyone wins, race to the bottom nonsense that has blighted society since the 90s. I teach cadets who I know in the old days would do resit after resit and never pass, (creating a proper separation like we used to have) who pass exams in the mickey mouse system after a couple of goes. We’ve got Senior and Master cadets who look at you lessons like you have 2 heads and speaking in tongues. When I think of the work I put into cadet exams, it is dismaying. Mind you I thought the same when our kids did their GCSEs, where they had got not far short of a pass in some subjects before sitting in an exam hall. From what I’ve seen of the new GCSE I think we will get a better idea of those academically able.
The NCO ACP’s have always linked rank to Classification, it’s just that everyone ignores it and does what they want anyway.
If it’s so easy to pass, then what’s the problem with requiring them to have the qualification?
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I suppose the bronze DofE is now difficult to achieve for some before NCO rank - remember they could be in for over 2 1/2 years before they are even eligible to pass the Bronze DofE.
Technically yes, but I see so few cadets at 12 I won’t worry about that bridge until I come to it. Annoyingly these younger cadets could become unbalanced between DofE and classification!
It’s the fact it’s so easy to pass which is becoming the problem, as such now classifications are meaningless and indicate nothing in terms of cadet ability/knowledge.
As staff we’ve sat subject exams to get a feel of the questions (which largely haven’t changed from the old paper exams) and a few of us have passed without knowing any of the subject. How is that a sensible classification / exam system? The teaching of classifications is becoming largely incidental to cadet training.
Whereas years ago most cadets wouldn’t have done Leading or Senior before starting DofE nearly all of our cadets are Leading before reaching 14 and some could easily pass Senior at 14½…
But that’s about how you structure your programme. We only run syllabus training once a year, during the winter months, so there is no way they can do more than 1 exam a year, this keeps it generally aligned to DofE. (I appreciate if you have loads join at 12 that may become an issue, but even with the old paper exams it would have been the same.
I’m afraid I must disagree with you there. DofE must be voluntary, and it is just wrong to say a cadet must do it in order to be promoted. What would be more acceptable would be having it in a list of things and say they cadet must have one of them, which would give them a choice.
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DofE is a core part of the training programme, all of our cadets takie part in 3 out of the 4 sections as a matter of course. Besides if I’m looking at people as potential NCO’s why would I consider those who don’t choose to volunteer?
Because DofE has to be voluntary. By forcing cadets to do it you are violating the spirit of the award. By all means tell the cadets they would be insane not to do it, but penalising them for not doing it is wrong.
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They don’t have to do annual Camp either, but they aren’t eligible to be a CWO if they haven’t done it. (Those are the Corps rules not mine). It’s not a matter of punishing people it’s a matter of having a standard and if people don’t meet that standard then they aren’t eligible for promotion. No one is forced to register with the Award Scheme, but they still do almost all the sections anyway because it’s part of the Training Programme.
DofE is non competitive, it is personal to the individuals and not compulsory but the ATC for some reasons treats it like it is compulsory, makes it like a sausage machine with things cadets do just by being cadets part of the award at all levels so hardly individual and a competition with league tables of which sqn has got each level and sqn cdrs questioned if they aren’t getting ‘enough’ through the DofE. All of this is outside what I consider to be the meaning of the DofE as an award system.
We’ve always had a few cadets who don’t want to do it for whatever reason and how much the message that this is the only thing the Corps does that is worth anything. I don’t see what doing the DofE has to do with being an NCO.
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And this is where the ATC is IMO in direct contravention of the ethos of the DofE. Sqns use this flawed approach to devalue what is one of the prime achievements for young people, ie the Duke of Edinburgh Award, many of whom achieve awards without the artificial support of the ATC. Years ago we employed a Gold holder, who had not been a member of any organisation other than a swimming club and had gone looking for ways to do things.
I stipulate that cadets can have only ‘cadet’ element (excluding expeds - solely on a cost basis) to each section of the DofE and I am constantly amazed at what they do. It does mean on AIs I get moaned about for not getting as many cadets through the award as other sqns and I’m quite happy to quote it’s voluntary, which cannot be argued with.
I’d never use DofE as an element for promotion, as the cadets have plenty of pure volunteering opportunities throughout the year, such collecting and community events, which are open to all cadets requiring no prerequisite skill / ability.
The CWO matrix is as banal and stupid as the SNCO and Officer matrices. Given that camp places are like diamond encrusted gold nuggets, making annual camp attendance (by which I mean blue camp, not the invented wing camps) a compulsory element just shows how far the ATC hierarchy are from the reality of sqn life.
So you question people programming DofE as being against the Ethos and then limit what they can and can’t use to meet your view of what the Award should be surely that is against the Ethos too?
I encourage my cadets to go out and do things other than Cadet activities for their DofE but surely it’s only responsible to do as much to facilitate it as possible? We tend to get a few who choose not to advance beyond Bronze usually the lame or the lazy who don’t like doing expeditions.
Promotion isn’t something that all cadets are entitled to, you don’t just get promoted if you hang about long enough (at least you shouldn’t), therefore it doesn’t matter what an individual OC sets as their criteria as long as the approach is consistent & fair.