Classification Exams: fit for purpose?

Adult Staff Execs
82

how do you reach that conclusion?

perhaps because that is what it was doing back in the 80s and prior and because the subject, materials and topics haven’t change it thus must therefore be for the same reason?

it cannot of course be a moving target, and with it a “To promote and encourage among young people a practical interest in aviation”

The material is by and large the same, with updates as necessary and the RAF has moved on. but that doesn’t mean our purpose hasn’t nor can’t move on also?

Why are you so convinced the ATC today is still a recruiting agency for the RAF? and because of that the training provided must be relevant to RAF applicants?

Or are you perhaps reverse engineering the situation? because we teach topics which are useful to those who join the RAF we therefore must be a recruiting tool?

would you have expected it to?
As an aviation themed, military sponsored youth organisation which is a situation which hasn’t changed in 80+ years why would you expect the target audience to have changed?
The only change you will have noticed since 1989 is a lower entry age, now 12 years of age rather than the peculiar 13yr3months.
We are still an attractive option for those teenagers with an interest in aviation, adventure training and the military. I am not sure what point you are trying to make other than surprise that the ATC remains successful at recruiting/interesting the same demographic of the local community…?

…is what? you start this paragraph with the suggestion you are going to offer us a gem of a question, tackling the real issue then distract yourself, going off on a tangent about first class logbooks and never get back to “…the real question…”

we do not “need” it but there is a gap in society which has been filled for the last 80+ years by the ATC, and similarly by the ACF
but just because we do not need something doesn’t make it useful?

spend some time with parents of Cadets and they’ll tell you how being the Cadets has help their child, spend some time speaking to organisers of the event the Squadron helped out and they’ll tell you how useful the Cadets are and how well they work together as a team.
spend some time speaking to member of the public who were just served by Cadets (be that bag packing, or helped in some other way) and they’ll be full of praise for their smart turn out, good manners and general good attitude.

where else do Cadets get the opportunity to conduct such activities and get praise for it if not in a youth group, Cadet Forces, Scouts, Guides or otherwise?

the UK Cadet forces are not a recruitment platform so fail to understand the point being made.

i am not sure how you want it put to better use - you slate the idea of youth groups producing better citizens, yet claim helping those at the bottom of life in real need is also inappropriate?
how should volunteers be used?

was there.

there is no mandatory conscription, and the Cadet Forces are not a recruitment tool. the scope has changed but that doesn’t make the training any less relevant or important to those who are interested.

83

Omg… keyboard warriors… please relax!

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84

I would suggest that you wouldn’t come out with such comments to these ladies. Male and female conscription is equality written large, same as the UK having and have had women in special forces since the 80s and now as infanteers, and as frontline aircrew.

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85

Blimey! That’s pretty badass!! :grimacing:

Beware of the effects of exaggeration by the press: any story I’ve known about that I’ve seen in a newspaper has been 50% complete fabrication, another 25% heavily biased towards the editor’s personal viewpoint, and the remaining 25% is probably what really happened.

Unit body counts, like fighter squadron claimed kills, are very hard to confirm: I’d have been happy with the Caracal battalion’s body count having a zero trimmed off it - that would be about right for a counter-insurgency campaign against a tough enemy, and a good day’s work fighting the bad guys.

The Israeli war reporters probably had a meeting before they wrote up the stories like the one in Full Metal Jacket, where Joker’s realistic account of a jungle firefight in Vietnam is changed by his CO to include a dead NVA officer: “Grunts like reading about dead officers.”

Still, a bit of press exaggeration never hurt in war… readers of the Jerusalem Post “don’t want to read it and feel bad about what’s going on” as the man said. And at least the Israeli press are supportive of their own country’s war effort… which is more than we got in Iraq from the UK media, who printed not one good news story from that campaign. :roll_eyes:

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86

I did ask ‘the real question’ in that post, but it came at the end of a complex sentence. It was about what purpose the Classification Programme has in today’s RAFAC. My opinion was that 1st Class and Leading Cadet are the cadet’s basic training and the knowledge and skills contained within should be known by all uniformed staff and cadets, in order for us to still be Air Cadets i.e. part of the RAF. Our parent service supply us with facilities, opportunities and equipment unmatched by any other youth organisation, so we should at least look and sound like the part.

Senior and Master Cadet subjects are specialised aeronautical studies, but I have yet to hear any cadet questioning their content or relevance to their future life - I found them interesting enough when I was a cadet: you’d vote with your feet otherwise.

I did also mention that if we did bin classification training, which some on this forum have suggested, we’d then have to fill in the training time with something else: great for long, fine weather summer evenings, not so good for horrible dark wet winter nights. And then there’s the paperwork for doing nearly anything outside: at least classifications are already set up to run with.

I have felt for a number of years now that we in the UK do too much organised volunteering sometimes. I’ve done my share with several organisations, and still do with a couple of others as well as the RAFAC. The point of ‘too much’ might come when volunteers end up providing services which should be furnished by redistribution of tax money and resources by national or local authorities. It’s the state health, educational and housing programmes which must provide an equal chance in life for all from birth. Trying to help disadvantaged or underprivileged groups when they are in their teenage years, for example, is often too late in life. We in the RAFAC probably don’t see the really disadvantaged people, and couldn’t do much to help them if we did. :thinking:

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87

There’s a distinction between binning the system, and eradicating the topics. I’m not saying that’s what all proponents are advocating specifically, but there would be scope to still cater for many of the topic areas just in different ways - these, too, could make use of provided materials. These adaptations, set loose from the confines of the classification system, may even be easier to deliver, or at least more accessible to those without pre-existing specialist knowledge or interest.

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88

Considering part of ASTRA is better alignment with what the RAF desires, that line is blurring - at least from corporate mission and senior leadership opinions aspect.

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89

We are always short of training time, I could happily remove classifications (Leading upwards) from the programme completely and it have a positive impact on both the content and quality that we could deliver.

If we are doing classifications purely to have something to do we are doing it for the wrong reasons.

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90

I’d make anything above Leading an optional thing - like Stem, radio, space, road marching and all those other specialist things we have which requires dedicated, knowledgeable and passionate staff to deliver them.

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91

I think we’re getting to the nub of this topic: the classification programme up to Leading is pretty much what we all should either learn or know, in order that we can be Cadets and CFAVs within the RAFAC, but the rest of it’s debatable. So here’s my take on it all:-

In the old days, Senior and Staff (I’m going to use the pre-Master term here) Cadet training was not seen as advanced or specialised training either by us cadets or our instructors: it was just what the ATC did as its core activity during the week. On my squadron, the uniformed staff never taught cadets; it was done by Staff Cadets (they all had the Pt 2 yellow lanyard) or by the two CIs we had. One was an ex-cadet and therefore a general aviation enthusiast, and the other was an ex-Merchant Navy officer who taught us Engines and Airframes. He also instructed at a local nautical college. That subject could have bee me taught by a Staff Cadet: if I could understand it, it must have been simplified enough to be taught to us all.

I don’t remember any cadet struggling with the subject matter, whether teaching or learning it. It seemed to me to be pitched at slightly under the level one would need to study a GCE ‘O’ Level academic subject. In other words, the classification training complemented what one was learning at school, and would be geared to those who would join the RAF in technical trades, for which one still needs Maths, English, a Science and some technical aptitude to enter. If you could achieve that at 16, then ninety percent of the service and civilian employment market was open to you, in the days when that percentage of young people left school and got a job or started a career.

And we all did just that. Our training in the ATC also meant that the peacetime RAF of the 1980s had a ‘war reserve’ of young men, who if called to arms by a Conscription Act, would most likely volunteer for the RAF rather than wait to be called up into the Army: both my grandfathers jumped before they were pushed in WWII. In 1941, one joined the Royal Navy, having been a Sea Scout, and the other took an officer’s commission in the Royal Marines.

The 1980s was probably the last time the RAF could have rapidly expanded in the threat of a major war, like the Ukrainian Army has had to do recently. After Options for Change that capability, based upon a large organisation with many bases and training staff and facilities, started to be reduced…and reduced… :grimacing:

And that’s before we even start arguing about the de-industrialisation of Britain, its education system then and now, our lack of reserve war materials and the fact we have a lot fewer retired British Merchant Seamen to pass on their knowledge to young people. :roll_eyes:

Maybe we should ask the RAF what they think would be useful to them for us to study these days: they do pay for the majority of our training facilities and materials, after all. This is in order that the RAFAC doesn’t lose that connection with our parent service and its defence of our country.

We as a nation are in a worse situation than when I was a cadet in the early 1980s: in those days we had a Cold War, a terrorist threat from N Ireland, and the occasional one-off like the Falklands War which had to be won. Now we are at war with Russia, in a Cold War with China, and are likely to have a resurgent terror campaign in the UK because of our government’s direct support of Israel’s war with the Palestinians… and we haven’t even got decent rock and pop songs about nuclear war these days for a bit of light relief. :thinking:

Anyway, that’s the big picture behind why I’m going in this evening to teach History of Flight or something similar. While I’m there, I’ll ask the more switched on cadets what they think of the classification programme if I get time. :crazy_face:

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92

You really need to realise that

A) we are not a recruiting arm for the RAF or any armed forces
B) the training we provide is therefore not a precursor to any armed forces role and is essentially interest only. Themed around aviation, but not specifically the RAF (air power and military aircraft systems excepted).
C) the “state” of the RAF and its ability to defend the UK is in no way linked or tied to our uniformed youth organisation.

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93

Wow! You sound like you know a thing or two about the training… On a related subject, any idea where I could pick up some notes on AirFrames please - son has failed the exam (probably due to not being able to attend all the lessons) and would like to do some revision at home before resitting.

He was very keen to to History of Flight by the way… not sure he’s been offered that at his squadron.

Thanks

94

Sorry? Your take on “it all” is that the ATC (and the RAF and UK) of the 1980’s is different to that of the ATC, RAF and UK of the 2020’s and we should look at what the RAF is focusing on. Did I get that right?

Kinda like how the RAFAC is focusing onto Air, Space and Cyber?

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95

We never have been a recruiting arm of the RAF - I’ve never written that. I read a contemporary article about the formation of the ADCC in a 1938 aviation journal, and there was no mention of it there: they neither confirmed or denied that fact. The rest of the article could have described our Corps at any period of its history.

I teach the cadets that we are part of No 22 Group of the RAF; we wear the uniform; we conduct weapon training and firing with the L98A2 rifle, learn various military subjects (fieldcraft, drill, the RAF, military aircraft knowledge etc etc). We’re pretty close to being a junior arm of our parent service.

We’ve always had the three aims of the Air Cadets - what is missing is the reason why: in other words, we give young people a practical interest in aviation, training for service & civvy life, leadership and adventure… in order to do what, exactly?

There’s no official answer to that question: we’re all doing it for many reasons of which I’m aware, none of them detrimental to young people or our society. What’s wrong with national defence and resilience to the challenges the rest of this century will give us?

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96

Where do you think the push into cyber and STEM and the corporate move away from modelling and air recce has come from?

Our ASTRA is designed to align with theirs - including changes to syllabus topics.

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97

And this is where we are back to ineffective change management. Generally speaking (dangerous, I know), the majority of us know that RAFAC Astra is to align us with the parent service and keep the money and facilities available (what’s left of it).

However I cannot discern any effort to carry the volunteer cadre along with those whose full time job is to keep the corps (and therefore their jobs) in existence.

It’s all very good telling me I must now emphasise space and cyber but we don’t have any staff with the required knowledge or interest. We are flush with competent engineers, navigators and shouty types however.

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98

TCW, there is a book called ‘Aircraft Structures and Systems’ by Ray Wilkinson - I think he was in the Air Cadets. We have a copy at our cadet centre, and it might be what you’re looking for. I saw it on Waterstones online store for twenty quid. Otherwise find one of the old Air Cadet Publications on Engines and Airframes on eBay. :thinking:

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99

The Air Cadets has changed little over its lifetime - the training they did in WWII or during the Cold War would be recognisable to us. I taught briefly as a CI in 1989, came back nearly quarter of a century later to go into uniform as a CFAV, and picked up where I left off. There’s always been the modern techie subjects in addition to the aeronautical basics.

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100

Question answered! Good to see someone’s on the case! :+1:
Sad to hear about the modelling and air recce.
Funnily enough I was on both Field and Rapier Squadrons when I was in the RAF: we’d make models of the ground over which we’d patrol in the former, and had to score full marks in visual 1km distance aircraft recce tests (including a thermal imagery recce test)for our annual categorisation boards in the latter. :nerd_face:
But you’re right: training time is limited.

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101

Not to say that every unit has scrapped them, but the org has dropped them as topics.

We have groups still that already had an interest that we cater for.

The RAF is more and more focused on Cyber and Space, and STEM as a broad label has relevance to a lot of areas.

It makes sense, but we have issues with resourcing, knowledge, and competing against far more developed and advanced school programmes.

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