sw region is running LOADS of ELA tutor courses.
Contact Rick Whitehead SW.HSA
Thank you! Just sent an email
He does it as part of the RA Course so you may be able to tick two boxes
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Has anybody ever actually run a cadet ELA course?
As is common, it was included along with the RA course I redid a few years back, and I can honestly say Iāve never seen the need to bore my cadets silly with it since.
Yep, ive run quite a few, all cadets in my squadron have ELA (bar a few who arrived just before covid. Not the most interesting course in the world but i make it as interesting as i can.
I think the thing which killed it for me outright was when the Region H&S man introduced it with the words:
āSo what do the cadets get out of it? ā¦They get a certificate.ā
Great. A certificate. Is that all weāve got to sell this on?.. As though all the cadets are interested in is collecting certificates? What are the benefits, man!? We then proceeded to go through the whole folder and at the end I decided that there really werenāt any worthwhile enough to warrant putting anyone through that toss.
So I havenāt; and I wonāt.
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Our Wing does them on a fairly regular basis, the WingCo is paranoid about getting people through it for some reason.
Iāve never known a cadet to enjoy it or find it in any way useful.
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No, I refuse to run them on the basis that no cadet joins us to get a health and safety certificate that canāt even be used externally, so we canāt even pretend it has some civilian use that justifies it.
Was this another Donaldism?
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āWalk around the Sqn and find 4 safety signsā¦ Draw them here.ā
I can remember doing exactly that in school year 3 or 4. Itās even worse than the playschool approach we take to STEM.
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Yeah i feel the same as you, but my wing commander is pretty hot on all cadets having it.
Sometimes i enjoy making them do it, i normally schedule it after they have been little expletives the night before.
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You hear these stories about commanders insisting on [x, y, z]ā¦ I often wonder what goes on in the heads of those people.
Itās all about numbers I think. āLook, we got 120 cadet risk assessment course certificates this yearā. No one bothers to ask āso what?ā.
Itās particularly jarring when our traditional, adventurous activities dwindle and get replaced by a classroom course on how to spot danger.
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This is exactly how I feel about it!
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Itās pretty much the only way our RSA (SW) will award a gold starā¦ So Iām looking to run it maybe once a year for those who are interested.
It was on the rumoured list of requirements for promotion to Cpl, and remains on the Wingās recommendation that gt published last year but pretty ignored
I was told in my training that it can be used externally and it was piggy bagging off this something from the British safety council. Presumably this?
https://www.britsafe.org/products/entry-level-award-in-workplace-hazard-awareness/
Itās like a lot of the cadet certificates and things, useful at the time for the CV etc but probably less useful later in life if they have gained higher level qualifications/experience. You could probably argue the same for GCSEs though.
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You poor devilsā¦
Iām not actually sure how the RSA could withhold a Gold award simply because no Cadet ELA courses have been runā¦ Thereās a list of requirements for achieving gold and when last I checked, Cadet ELA wasnāt on it.
God. What a terrible idea!
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Like wise we were pushed into doing it from
Wing. We ran them in the sqn but changed it to
Make it more relevant for cadets going on camps Or actual activities and ran it in with the first Class cadet Training.
We showed pictures such as remove headgear from a station and then explained about FOD.
The WO and OC had tons of different PPE from their work all spare. we made up a kind of āgameā where they were given a cadet scenario and in a team they had to collect and dress one of the team in the correct PPE. Anything to make it more enjoyable and male cadets think before going on a camp etc.
A few years ago when I was the Wg Trg Off, I had been instructed by the then OC Wg to introduce the ELA into the Wg. First though, I had to obtain authority from Donald to become a ELA tutor.
Despite me holding a Level 3 Award in H&S and having been responsible for overall H&S within my company for many years, I was told Iād still have to do a ELA tutor course so that āI knew my subjectā.
That conversation ended in me telling him to stuff it up his aā¦
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The only reason that I attended that damned RA course at all was that we apparently required someone on the Squadron to have an RA course qualificationā¦ Iād previously completed a Wing RA course but that wasnāt sufficient apparently.
The Sqn OC at the time held a number of NEBOSH qualifications higher than the Region guy assessing us, but that wasnāt sufficient eitherā¦ Someone had to attend the HQAC approved RA course because āIt is specific to usā.
IS IT HELL!?
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^^This.
And the organisation wonders why some CFAVās get on their hind legs over thingsā¦
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