Yeah great
BUT
the material for the cadets has been dumbed down again. Almost as if flashy graphics now trump substance.
Why not? It’s how countless people did it for more years than since ultilearn and the cadets got through the exams. As soon as you go down the training route for some reason in the ATC it all starts to get complicated as people try to make it more than it is. All it needs to be is a fire and forget information day for interested parties, no compulsion, no development, follow up etc etc etc etc.
I’ve done courses through work costing many £00s and you go and come back, but with the ATC it never seems to be quite that simple, plus it’s all at the weekend.
HQAC used to run a limited number of subject training courses, I did a couple and they were pretty good and TBH I only did them as I get a week at work for ‘camps and training’. If I’d had to use holiday I wouldn’t have gone.
We don’t need to have people “qualified” as subject masters or dome some instruction qualification, we’re not school. I am pretty certain the people who have led the work courses I’ve done don’t have any sort of instruction/teaching qualification, as it would say on their profiles or website blurb, but I come away knowing more than I did before, which is all you need.
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Because the world has changed Telfon since you were a boy with your slate and chalk.
People now realise that the more effective way to impart learning to the greatest number of people is to teach, rather than just expect someone to get on with self study.
Self study doesn’t work for everyone. A well prepared lesson will account for different learning styles.
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Get over yourself. What I describe happened until a few short years ago, until we had to print books, with new and established staff did it. I don’t know how long you’ve been involved as staff, but anymore than 10 at the outside and you would have had this experience.
The ‘greatest number or people’ would probably be 5-10 and they would invariably need to do some pre-reading ie self-study.
People in the ATC I feel try to make more of it than it is, primarily as we have to maintain a permanent staff, who have things like KPIs, annual reviews etc.
We also need to understand what we are trying to do, which is give cadets enough information to get through an 'eenie, meenie ’ exam which is of no real value, which even from my cadet days were never the greatest test. I don’t know if cadets can get UCAS points from cadet stuff, but if they are relying on it, what the hell have they been doing at school? So do we need ultra informed, trained staff doing the instruction on a parade night as part of their hobby, which they can go to the depth they feel they need to. If they want to learn more, now it’s a few keyboard strokes away.
I would rather have half a fix, than a pie in the sky no fix.
Yes, the best way forward would be to have training for staff, but why not have the guides as well?
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Me get over myself? Fella, you’re the one who is constantly grumpy with the world and who thinks he always knows best…
If you approach it with that mentality then what’s the point at all?
How about instead we give them enough information to develop a good understanding of various subjects? Particularly at Senior and MAC level where there is a degree of choice in which subjects to study we could aim to give them an even greater understanding of a subject they might be interested in.
They’ve all CHOSEN to be cadets - just as all staff have chosen to be staff. Clearly they have an interest they want to develop. So let’s help them to develop it.
Warning, warning, extreme danger. Someone’s dropped the F word.
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Genuine lol - as they say 
And again, play nicely please.
This.
But I feel this makes an up-to-date staff book / well written notes more important.
Train-the-trainer and staff development sessions would be great, and would really improve the quality of lessons. But for those that want a quick refresher, or who need to quickly look something up before a lesson, a well written book would be really helpful.
tl;dr, I don’t feel books and training sessions are mutually exclusive, they’re complimentary.
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Yeah, that’s a very fair point.
This.
I’m not sure that 12+ year olds joining have a degree of interest per se other than do some other things after school and at the weekends and staff only start as they want to help or carry on from being a cadet. There is no real higher purpose or reason for the majority in either case for being in the ATC. Did I join the ATC all those years ago for more than going flying, camps on RAF stations and potentially joining the RAF, no and everything I did other than that was on a “I’ll give it a go” basis. The only ones who might come in with a distinct purpose are those teenagers told by AFCOs to join the ATC, but they’ve always been rarer than unicorn riding mermaids.
Looking at some of the comments, training for classification subject matter would have to include technical/scientific learning and understanding if as instructors, people pass on a deeper understanding they would need this aspect, with detailed books to support this. I think we would have to be equipped to do stripping / rebuilding / building things for propulsion, airframes, radio/radar, getting into the real physics/engineering of flight, propulsion, communications and similarly for other subjects. This is the level of detail that you would need to go to if the idea was to impart greater knowledge. This would be very expensive to set up to make it meaningfully available for staff training at Wing level and then replicate it at squadrons. There would be no point in having some sort of half-way house arrangement. If you are going to train people to do a job you have to time, effort and resources in place. At work we have spent many months over the last 25 years, training people to do what we do, in their locations. We started out travelling and doing it for them but found it got in the way of our local work, so we’ve done training at our site where we have all the facilities and then at their request gone to other sites for practical training and advice on what they need to get set up to do the work.
I would put my house on the fact that the bulk of classification lessons for people on here and staff around the UK who were cadets, were done in the most part by people who were given a book to read to learn the subject with a view to teaching it or learned it as cadets and then went on to teach it themselves. I know those ex-cadets now staff who went on to teach other cadets who I taught, this was their experience. Lo and behold like me and countless others exams passed, badges issued and then went on to impart that acquired knowledge to generations of later cadets. If like me you wanted to understand it more, you did some research / learn more about it under your own volition. We are not school where you expect teachers to have full knowledge, although I know people who are teachers who do not teach subjects they did a degree in and have picked it as they have gone along, from what they did as A Levels. Also with proper exams there needs to be a deeper understanding to answer essay questions, rather than just picking one from four exams with a 50% pass rate like we have.
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Hi all,
I’ve just had a cadet sit and pass the Bronze Space Module 2 five times this evening and it’s not registered any of the attempts…
Has anyone shared this issue/know how to resolve it other than through a Helpdesk ticket?
Thank you
Even a helpdesk ticket won’t help now, it’s email only 
But on the serious note, yes, contacting helpdesk is normally the only way I’ve found of getting rid of these issues. For now you have to email helpdesk@rafac.mod.gov.uk rather than raising a ticket.
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Did the update go live?
It’s a shame the cadet has had to retake it so many times. I have heard Ultilearn is getting a fix applied in the next few days to prevent this happening in the future.
The qualification must be manually inputted into SMS anyway (Ultilearn doesn’t send anything about this course to SMS), so if you are sure the cadet has completed both bronze modules, issue them with a certificate and add it to their SMS record 
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I’m assuming not as the last update said it would be the 26th but details will be provided if that happens, and I’ve not seen anything?
This is the issue 
ongoing an unresolved for months. Unfortunately the talk of a new system “coming” seems to remove any effort to resolve these type of issues with the current system.