Is the “headmaster bypass” actually likely to get removed?
Does the senior management come from our budget or the RAF’s bearing in mind they are as FTRS still effectively serving? How are non Air Cadet FTRS posts paid for? I cannot imagine a number of slush funds around the RAF to pay for them.
Whichever way you can see lots more gravy train jobs, rather than less.
Despite the recent increases to Defence spending the MOD budget will remain tight and that will always impact the funds available to the sponsored cadet forces. Both public and private organisations face the same resource challenges on a day to day basis. My experiences in both leads me to a 3 stage process to improve the service provided to the delivery end of any business. Review structure, processes and people in that order.
For too long, far too large a chunk of the RAFAC pot has spent on administering the organisation rather than providing sufficient qualified training specialists to do the heavy lifting to enable a turn-key coherent training syllabus, with the supporting resources, to be available for hard-pressed volunteers.
Re-brigading the support structures and enabling more coherent IT driven administration should allow the powers that be to reform the full-time people part of the RAFAC to deliver what is actually required to support the volunteers.
I suspect we are only at Part 1 of 3. I, for one, wish the Comdt the best of luck. He will find naysayers, blockers and self interest by the bucketful but, if this forum is anything to go by, volunteers are frustrated mostly by the impediments to delivering the best possible experience for cadets; getting the correct supporting structures is the critical first step to putting things right.
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Completely agree
And words
This.
Oh and pointless admin.
And jobsworths.
The volunteer cadre, dont want much. Just to be able to deliver the syllabus, unhindered, without fuss or unnecessary bull poop.
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Just realised I hope there will be a rejig of TEST areas as well. It’s never made sense for a South London CCF to be in South West TEST, but if we’re coming under LASER RC that will make even less sense.
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That’s due to the abolition of South Central, which was (IIRC) largely a cost saving measure to pay for extra TEST SNCOs for areas needing it for CEP. We’re the same - we are right on the border of SE. (Though we are in TVW ATC which is SW so who knows…)
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Unlikely, I would say, because it would require a rewrite of JSP814 and the CCF memorandum, and anyway would involve overriding the Head’s responsibility for activities in their school which can’t (I believe) be done.
If we lost the pointless admin and jobsworths … that’s 99% of HQAC consigned to history.
I wonder if the increase in CCF(RAF) cadets to 25% of the RAFAC will also trigger the same split for places on courses, camps and other opportunities? AEF/VGS, ACLC, ACPS, IACE…
25% of places allocated for CCF(RAF) and 75% allocated for ATC.
How does it split at the moment? It always seemed like the CCF got quite a good number of spaces certainly on ACLC.
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ACLC is organised by CCF staff largely isn’t it which might explain that?
(I know some ATC people are involved too).
Certainly it seems the CCF arent exactly hard done by…
Very variable. We get virtually no advanced gliding, for example, although a fair split of the entry level stuff. More than our fair share of AEF in most cases, but there are structural issues here (e.g. how many ATC sqns can attend on a weekday?) ACLC was indeed a CCF initiative. We get almost no QAIC, nor the very expensive JL.
Go back 12 years and I think there were <10 out of 90 that I recall. But I’m sure there was roughly equal numbers of CCF(RAF) to ATC at CLC Frimley (courtesy of the ACF) - sharing crumbs though and ATC were at a distinct disadvantage because we lacked the FT syllabus and policy to properly prepare cadets for that or JL.
I was under the impression those places were awarded on merit rather than by quota anyway.
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So, the same as every cadet then! Don’t think I’ve seen any advanced courses advertised since the beginning of the PTS…
Yep, having been at selection many times I can guarantee there was no bias against CCF. We’ve had many good CCF grads
The balance of opportunity for ATC and CCF cadets will undoubtedly emerge in time. However the proportional allocation (25%/75%) is unlikely to be the outcome.
While the vast majority of ATC units are community based and draw from a number of schools the CCF units fall into 2 main groups; those in the independent sector and those in the state sector.
Those in the independent sector further subdivide into day and boarding schools and then once again to those which operate Mon to Fri and those which have Sat morning school and sports fixtures on Sat afternoon. To attend Sat activities on a regular basis (JL/QAIC/Cadet on a VGS) would require considerable internal negotiation on a school by school basis. There have been outstanding CCF cadets on national courses but their numbers, for the reasons listed above, will inevitably be small.
CCFs in state schools could be another matter in time but if they exist in 11-16 schools the eligible cadets will have external exams just at the time they would be competitive for places. They then leave for post 16 education and unless they transfer to their local ATC unit will be lost.
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Lots of sensible points here. I would just add, though, that these kinds of structural issues also underlie the fact that CCF has had more than 25% of AEF. Neither situation has been engineered deliberately, but you wouldn’t think it from some of the comments on CCF AEF allocations that I have had!
The issue of CCFs in 11-16 schools is a tricky one but one would hope that those cadets would be welcomed with open arms by the ATC at 16…
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