I don’t have that information for you at the moment -sorry.
It’s unlikely to be forthcoming either. We have lived with notions of this will happen and the vaguest of timescales for things in recent years. Somewhat confusing when all the projects I’ve been involved with have had quite tight deadlines and only ever moved with the consent of senior management, as time is money and some of those involved have other projects on the go or in the pipeline.
What I can say is that the Microsoft Azure/Office 365 stuff will hopefully be before the end of Q2 2019 - the other stuff I am less sure of as it isn’t something I am directly involved in.
I will share updates as and when I can 
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Except we’re not really doing that much more in terms of content areas. It is, however, more focused. And staff don’t HAVE to give up more time. Are you saying that you would rather a cadet wasn’t able to do something, because you don’t have a knowledgeable member of staff to teach it? Or half-4$$ it with a bodge job, winging it with 50% knowledge? Or cover the same stuff as you did last time because you can’t progress it? As opposed to be able to go away for a weekend and do it with a specialised team of instructors - able and willing? And there were course in many of these subjects available already, so there’s very little additional commitment over the status-quo.
Soooooo they didn’t create a poster asking if we were “on target”, which informed us of what we should be focusing on? That poster didn’t contain most of what we were doing and only cut out the chaff such as balloon aeromodelling or whatever other nonsense people got up to?
I agree that we should. I feel that there were some out there pressuring people or feeling pressured to do more than they could or should. However, there are lots of people out there perfectly able to willing to give additional time.
How is it “in theory”? We’ve covered off that most of the blue stuff is easily deliverable on units with minimal knowledge and only a little more work than completing the 1st class book. After that, a cadet can choose what they want to do and if they want to do it. A member of staff can choose if they want to instruct it.
Let’s call this, “ensuring consistency and quality of delivery”. Shooting, FT, AT, First Aid, et al, all have SQEPs, so why shouldn’t radio and cyber (for example)?
You’re right - there are far more things now to distract people away from us, and attitudes have changed making people more conscious of how they value the use of their time (although what they give higher priority to might not vibe what we think they should). If we aren’t offering what the cadets want from their time with us, then we won’t keep them. Doing the same things over and over without progression or achievement just isn’t the same hook as it used to be.
Well, yeah… Probably - in part, at least. Now, if you have a cadet who falls in love with the radio the first time they pick one up, they aren’t stuck doing phonetics and radio checks for all eternity until they decide. There were courses, but they were harder to come by.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I actually like delivering training to cadets! So yeah, I’m more than happy to provide weekend activities for cadets…
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Married?
Got kids?
Got elderly parents?
Got other interests? Not related to the ATC in any way
At one time I would just do things that took all or part of weekend, then life and priorities changed, some thing like dad can we go/do this is hard to ignore or parties for two of them at the same time in different directions or just wanting some time with the family and the ATC doesn’t even figure in the mix. These don’t all coincide with ATC things all the time, but I seemed to find they did and once the kids got older, so had I and the lure of just kicking back at the weekend is far more appealing. There are younger staff to do this now, but some of them are finding family life and the ATC are not really compatible.
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When I was talking about things out of our control affecting retention I wasn’t speaking about things outside the ATC, I was thinking of things in the ATC we have no control over.
No gliding, no flying, sod all camp spaces, shooting more miss than hit, corporate IT not working. We lost cadets when ultiflop was introduced after a number of failed attempts to do the exams because the software / system wasn’t up to it.
As for PTS “courses” we’ve had a few offered, we’ve put them up and no takers, as parents aren’t too keen on driving 100 to 180 miles taking 4-6 hours out of their day. I don’t think it’s a good use of a day for staff. We’ve said we want them closer to us and as yet nothing happening.
I don’t know how old you are, when I was a cadet we didn’t have the distractions there are today and we didn’t have loads of cadet things to do all the time and it didn’t matter to us, will still did cadet things. So why now with the increased competition for time, it was felt we should be offering more belies belief. If anything we should be offering and doing a small core of things.
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This is exactly it - YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO ALL THESE THINGS. But just because don’t want to or can’t, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t exist!
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Your wing is doing it wrong. Blame them and not the system.
So it’s not right or logical to offer alternatives to fill those holes?
Don’t feed the troll.
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“back in my day”…
Come on. Wake up! The good old days are gone. The world is different, the people in it are different.
No, it doesn’t. There’s increased competition for the cadets’ time, ergo we offer a broad range of activities, with purpose and progression, in order to be relevant to the widest audience possible for as long as possible.
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Burt it has to be something comparable in terms of number and times/year, the things invented haven’t really done this. There are staff who were cadets in the 00s and they lament at the lack of opportunities that don’t mean sitting in a classroom.
As I say a small core of things like we had, done well rather than a wide spread set of things done not so well. Think of it like a business that makes or does a few things really well, which then decides to go into a lot of other areas and loses focus. The company I work for has sold off a number and stopped doing other things to concentrate on its core business over the last few years and is doing much better.
HQAC needs to look at what it does best and do that, rather than a scattergun of things which aren’t properly funded.
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So what then are we doing (looking at PTS) that we weren’t before in some way? There’s not much.
As for your second point here, you’ve previously argued against the need for staff to be qualified or authorised to deliver training, yet you want assurance of the quality of delivery?
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Like I said, don’t feed the troll. Take the discussion elsewhere please.