If we introduce the same academic requirements as our parent service, then what’s stopping someone from introducing the same physical and age requirements?
Either we do it fully, or you don’t do it at all. The latter is by far the more likely.
Was there not a short lived attempt at that when they first started putting VRT commissioning candidates through OASC and included a fitness assessment. Promptly binned that element due to public outcry 
Yeah…became optional then scrapped
Again, a not unreasonable idea on the face of it, but not properly thought through. Not least because it required a fitness test for officers but not SNCO applicants.
1 Like
Don’t know, takes a lot of hard work to achieve that mess bod.
1 Like
I resemble that remark!
I wouldn’t object to timed yomps across Dartmoor in CEMO for CFAVs 
I really have zero time for setting up that sms and all the RAs it would involve
1 Like
Yes Alex, that’s why you wouldn’t take part.
3 Likes
He can log in remotely over Teams
1 Like
Ill make sure dress regs are applied at start and finish.
1 Like
If there was an introduction of a minimum educational level to come and join this hobby, there would be 2 results:
- Quite probably get the backs up of CFAV already in, but not meeting that requirement - What do you mean? Good enough for the last 10/20/30+ years but not now??
- Reduce the pool of potential CFAV by 50%(?)
Now in that case do I go UBACS and cut down brim bush hat or DPM trousers with desert boots?
Thankfully never came in or I’d be a SNCO instead as I can’t pass the RAF fitness test, my knees don’t like the turns and I don’t like the running 
Mr Emz has made me run enough of them over the years. I’m sure I could improve on the situation if RAFAC was going to give me free gym membership and paid time off to go to the gym 
I’m in the same boat. So I do the Rockport walk test instead. Viable alternative.
1 Like
To me the real question is: why hasn’t everyone who has been through the state educational system in the UK between the ages of 5 and 16 got five ‘O’ Levels at Grade C or above when they leave secondary schooling?
Everyone in the country should have those grades in Maths and English, backed up by Science and Language/Humanities qualifications. If that’s what we spend billions of pounds on each year, we should get that as a minimum result.
The Air Cadet aeronautical programme is based upon the equivalent level of secondary schooling: cadets would be neither challenged by it nor be able to understand it otherwise.
Ergo, all adults trained as instructors who familiarise themselves with the subject matter should be able to teach the whole programme, just by being secondary school leavers. There should be no need for a CFAV to have tertiary education to teach any air cadet subject in the classroom.
…drill and SAA excepted: one needs other course students to learn those two subjects. Maybe fieldcraft: those three are purely military subjects which one would need either a qualification or experience gained in Regular or Reserve service.
Exped training at DoE/AT level needs the relevant qualification and experience, of course.
However, I’m referring in the main to the classroom work we do in the RAFAC.
1 Like
Because some people are thick, some people don’t care while at school, and others (a bigger number, I’d wager) suffered from the woeful, inadequate, or entirely absent support for neuro diverse conditions.
However, whatever the root cause is, the discussion is moot; plenty of people are in that position, and it’s not the air cadets’ place to fix it.
RAFAC attracts more academically able kids. Others go to the ACF. I agree that CFAVs who teach classification should have GCSEs/O-levels in maths and physics if they are going to be teaching leading and senior cadet principles of flight, propulsions systems etc.
3 Likes
Would you have a mandatory aptitude test or the like if to show that potential CFAVs were not just academically qual’d but had the mental capacity then stream to ACFSCC/RAFAC?
1 Like