Have you seen the recent announcement from RAFAC Command & Leadership School? It states that the Officers Initial Course (OIC) and SNCO Staff Initial Course (SSIC) will now be amalgamated into a single Combined Initial Course (CIC) with spaces for 10 officers and 10 SNCOs on each course. IBN to follow.
How do we all feel about that?
MB
I feel it will be just as useful as OIC and SSIC…
And I also feel it’ll really help courses feel like a team when they’re split up for messing…
I don’t know how much difference there is between the two courses anyway.
Certainly on my OIC the people who had done SSIC before said the course content was barely any different.
Or they won’t be in the messes but the transit accommodation (possibly meals in the OASC candidates’ mess if that is back now).
Or virtual.
I wonder how this merger will affect the accreditation for the ILM qualification you could get due to passing the course (plus some extra workbook work after) I’m sure SSIC was Lvl 3 and the OIC was Lvl 4.
May be very different, but the ACS (aviators command squadron) is where regulars do their non commissioned promotion courses. They’ve recently changed provider and it’s slightly different requirements now.
We also get level 3 as corporals, so hopefully you might get a better qual out of it.
They expressly state in the announcement that the new CIC will align to the Level 4 Qual.
This course will be residential from Mon – Fri inclusive and aligned to an ILM Level 4 qualification
The bigger thing in my mind is that it’s still volunteer un-friendly by being a full week.
Not just unfriendly, also continues to completely rule out anybody who’s a teacher.
Several teachers I know have been given time off to attend week long courses. They just had to ask their schools for the time off.
I’ve never heard of a school allowing that during term time. It’s hard enough for students to get a day off.
That’s interesting, I’ve heard of several teachers, from several different schools getting time to attend courses. Perhaps it’s just down to how supportive the school is.
My Contingent is quite unusual I think in that 90% of the CFAVs are external to the school, but my Trg Off is a Physics Teacher who was given the time to attend.
I made sure to have the Head and Bursars support before advertising.
My OIC was in an August a few years back. There were a good 4 or 5 teachers or other school staff on it, some CCF, some not. All remarked that that was the only course they could go on as they had no chance of doing one during term time.
Would this have been a good time to have moved these courses to Region level?
It would save a large proportion of CFAV travelling ridiculous distances to go on a week course, especially with the cost of travel.
100% this should have been the case, that or it’s kept virtual.
Having also done both they are pretty much the same course, albeit the SSIC had more of a steer on being an instructor than a manager.
Difficulty ensues then because of the accreditation.
The awarding body will have accredited ATF. And they won’t travel…
Crazy that people who get paid wont travel but they expect volunteers to travel some very long distances just to attend a course at Cranwell.
I liked the instructors at Cranwell and they honestly tried to relate to the role of a volunteer, unfortunately many of them haven’t ever volunteered in the cadet forces so dont understand the challenges enough to put together a course that is 100% relevant to being on a unit.
On the other side of that coin, there are too many volunteers in this organisation who like to empire build and make up their own rules so it could be alot worse if the training was handled by CFAV.
Uh, we cant win 
A- Does it need to be accredited?
2- Are people doing the course because it’s accredited?
iii- How many people on the course take up the offer of doing the exams?
I’d wager that the answers are;
No, definitely not, less than a third.
So, bin off the accreditation (saving us money in the process), and then move it to the Regions.
Job jobbed.
Agree.
HQAC don’t see it that way though unfortunately. Trying to pretend they are the same as IOD and ACS…
But isn’t it the case that on these course every volunteer is able to claim mileage & VA so in this case everyone is being paid.
Uniform staff are volunteering for extra responsibility & there is an expectation of extra commitment.
It is not unreasonable that they do a week long residential that allows them to get the ethos of the organisation into a newly appointed staff & that reminder that there is a HQ & way of thinking.
This will probably be good going forward as it builds the mutual interdependency between commissioned & non-commissioned.
It also reinforces to the NCOs that in cadet world they have the same level of uniform experience as newly commissioned officers and they don’t inherit the status that regular NCOs do in regards to officers.