I took flying and gliding out of recruitment literature and presentations for cadets and parents - I couldn’t in all honestly, and with any INTEGRITY, promote those as RAFAC activities - this is because as a Squadron Commander I now have cadets aging out after 5/6 years who have NEVER been in AEF or VGS aircraft. They may have had a 20minute flight in a chinook or something similar, but actual time behind the controls, none.
I assume you have access to the Commanders’ Dashboard - if not please look into it, that has the ability to tell you exactly how many minutes of flying and gliding have been completed. I think you will be shocked. Compare that to the number of days shooting, adventure training, fieldcraft and you will see its a tiny percentage of our offer to cadets, which is a shame. I was lucky enough to complete gliding scholarship and flying scholarships as a cadets, but back then most cadets on a squadron had Blue (non-solo) GS wings at age 16, and a large percentage had Silver (solo) wings. Now as a staff member I am genuinely intrigued when I see a cadet gain either. It’s a sad state of affairs, but at the coal face, RAFAC does not do Flying and Gliding anymore. It’s a specialist activity for ‘the few’.
I’m not sure which thread is best to place this on, but I’m very happy to take up @Cab’s kind offer of a visit / job shadow for the day. His PSO already has my contact details I think.
Clint is a mate of mine. I’ve heard there are more children on waiting lists for scouts than currently involved in scouting; however, if you get them in young as beavers or cubs, they jump to the top of waiting lists and can even start to transition up to six months early (attending both cubs and scouts, etc.)
Unlike the SCC, we don’t have an internal recruiting stream like that.
We have no waiting list and if we get newbies then we ask if they have any friends that will want to join with them. Filling out the forms on their first night and give it a couple of weeks before we add them to make sure they kind of like it and turn up.
When we are asked about flying and gliding by the parents, I tell them it’s a possibility and if they aren’t interested in flying then they don’t have to stress as we don’t force them to do anything. We then give them a tour of the building and the NCOs give them a brief of what to expect on the first 6 months on sqn.
