Despite making the edit to remove my details, anyone could still view the edit to reveal the details so this didn’t really fix that issue.
I’m the author of ACP 18 so it’s probably within my judgement as to whether it may / should be released here.
As for Official, SENSITIVE, personal judgement, etc., I’ll let an expert comment, because that I am not on this subject. I will certainly consider using SENSITIVE more.
On feedback collation, I agree that there are different ways of accomplishing this. E.g. the next level of consultation is going to be much wider. I often use a smaller, more-focussed, sample initially, sense-checking the question and seeing what the initial feedback is likely to be, which then shapes the next round.
Another example is a consultation on the Single Activities Matrix (which is marked as OS, btw!); it has gone to a sample and part of the consultation asks who the next audience should be. That next consultation level will probably go out later this week.
There’s also Alpha and Beta testing planned for some digital projects within military skills, for which we’ve already formulated target audiences.
Even if unmarked, it is automatically OFFICIAL. You don’t need to physically mark it as such, but that is what it is.
OFFICIAL SENSITIVE may have been appropriate as OFFICIAL PERSONAL is normally for actual personal documents, but I haven’t seen the document so I couldn’t be more specific.
We shouldn’t be sharing any documents on a public forum though, and generating this sort of discussion about a draft document which is still going through the process probably isn’t in the spirit of consultation anyway, as this will then reach and confuse cadets and staff alike ahead of any official release of guidance.
Someone made a point to me that sharing in this manner might discourage future consultations. Fingers crossed that won’t be the case.
For me (simply addressing the title), I’d be gutted if we couldn’t deliver the whole syllabus on our air rifle range.
We’re not where I want to be regarding operating capacity because it’s a lot of work to get staff qualified, but it’s a huge draw that keeps cadets coming back.
Anything that makes it harder for them to progress when it’s already tough getting them all through the range wouldn’t be desirable from my perspective.
A previous suggestion about adapting the difficulty / scoring bands for the different levels would be preferable.
Very fair. Not every view is popular and we should do everything possible to protect the free and candid sharing of views on such things. It improves our chances of finding the best answer.
Should now be fixed.
If the first half is specifically about open publishing, then I understand the potential for future reticence. But if referring to discussion and debate among a broad subset of the target demographic then that just seems counter-intuitive.
If the breadth of feedback so far hasn’t reached a desired level, then reaching a wider audience is a potential positive.
Provided there’s encouragement to provide mature and considered feedback through the official channel, is there any harm, procedurally speaking?
Could there have been an option to have provided summary details of the proposal in the Mil Skills channel with a “this has been under consultation via RShOs for feedback, and are currently investigating developing / have already adapted point x,y,z based off their comments, we’d like to give you a heads up and opportunity to comment before we begin finalising anything official”?
You can deliver FCC on an air rifle range. Some more fiery hoops to jump through for delivery of the course but is possible.
As a current Staff Cadet, I think making the gold shot an instructional qualification is an excellent idea. It finally gives cadets with a genuine passion for marksmanship the chance to teach and instruct in the subject. Ever since I was 15 and first fired the L98, I’ve been asking my staff if there was any way for me to help teach marksmanship on any of the rifles.
Having a proper qualification tied to the gold shot makes it feel far more competitive and official compared to the current system, where it can only be earned through competitions. My squadron doesn’t have its own range, and under the current structure, my cadets can only gain shooting qualifications at wing-level events with the L144 or L98, which are quite limited.
The new qualification removes the unfair advantage of large squadrons that could hand out gold badges to relatively new cadets in just a few months. While I can agree giving newer cadets opportunities is important, after spending five years in the Corps before finally earning my own gold badge, it’s frustrating to see cadets with no prior badges jump straight to gold. Making it a formal instructional qualification restores its prestige and makes it a badge to truly be proud of, just the same as Gold Leadership, First Aid, Road Marching and Music.
For clarity, I already hold my Gold Shot on the L98, and I’ll gladly take on this new qualification because I have been dying to teach marksmanship. Honestly, this is one of the first major changes to the shooting syllabus in a long time that I fully support.
A very fair point. I see a number of cadets desperate for ways to develop as support / leaders for shooting.
I’m not referring to discussion; you might have missed it but a previous post of mine (removed as part of a thread of replies) made clear I have no desire to discourage discussions on here.
That said, this forum isn’t all that inclusive and Teams, as you’ve mentioned, at least is accessible to all without needing to look elsewhere for information.
Yes, there were other ways of consulting. However, I think Rgnl ShOs deserved to be able to manage feedback from their AORs on this. Moreover, collating feedback can be overwhelming and having too large an audience when asking for open feedback, i.e. not just options on a form, can be unwieldy, hence the difference in approach in recent consultations.
Further still, this whole ‘consulting’ thing is in something of an infancy here. Have you seen much going on elsewhere? I and others are finding our feet a little so please forgive us if we don’t quite get the audience or mechanism right all the time. Equally, you might not agree with the audience or mechanism but I might choose them to produce the feedback I need, not always the feedback you want to give; e.g. I might simply need to know ‘how many apples do you have?’, not ‘describe your most rotten apples to me’.
Some good points, too. Thanks.
I was a Weapons Instructor (Cadet) at 18, and I’d love to see something like this return. For now, FCC is the best we have on offer and, given how important coaching really is, it’s really not a bad starting point … IMO …
Will representations be made to obtain NGB recognition for the FCC qualification?
As an aside, I well remember the last Weapon Standardisation Team (WST) assessment I underwent. Within three years I was able to read all the study material in a book I obtained from Cambridge Library. When I had previously read it, it was classified Secret and caveated. Things like that provide a sense of perspective.
exmpa
If I can throw a suggesting into the whole consultation & feedback aspect.
One of things that is often forgotten is the review after the option has been adopted & implemented.
What then happens is the adopted measure is not tweaked with real life experience or (more often) an idea that was good on paper but doesn’t actually work in practice is not rowed back on.
Part of this can be the volunteers natural resistance to change (trying to force back something that has changed) & the occasional toxic volunteer just causing chaos & undermining. Other times it’s because the lead volunteer for the change wishes to save face and/or no one wishes to challenge them.
So if you adopt this idea of having the gold course
Requiring FCC then please review a 6 mth & 12mth post implementation to see if actually having the change desired & have the courage to revert if not working.
“Fast fails” can be very useful but you do need to be fast & you do need to be able accept the failure in order for them to be effective.
Deal!
The team has just started looking at the general future of coaching courses; be sure you give this feedback when asked as part of that 
Would be interested to know what particular qualifications you had in mind.
The Core Coaching course use to qualify attendees as NRA Club Coaches - could something similar maybe occur with NSRA alignment ?
Yeah, they are the obvious ones it was more so if there was anything outside of that I hadn’t heard of.
One of the reasons for the change from the old GPMS to GSC was to reduce the amount of over-classification at the legacy RESTRICTED level by removing the concept that anything was unclassified and replacing this with the presumption that anything created or stored on government systems was OFFICIAL and that all information has value.
So, no, information asset owners should not be making everything OFFICIAL-SENSITIVE that isn’t suitable for a public forum: that would be a return to the bad old days when pages containing nothing but publicly available information about Ordnance Survey maps were marked RESTRICTED top and bottom and had to kept in safes, with old pages burnt when replaced with amendments.