I was on cadet portal looking at who is going to an event and saw someone had the rank of J/Cpl. Is this supposed to be Junior Cpl or something as I’ve never seen this rank before. So does anyone know what it is?
Junior corporal was a one chevron rank in the CCF(RAF) before the RAF introduced lance corporal in the Regiment. Since then the CCF(RAF) use lance corporal. The rank doesn’t exist in the ATC and is used by CCF(RAF) to allow parity with the Army sections when it comes to entry ranks for the NCO cadre, otherwise all brand new RAF section NCOs would outrank their peers in the army. There shouldn’t be anyone left in the CCF who held the rank of JCpl
The JCpl you saw was probably an admin error when they put the promotion on cadet portal. If ATC they are probably a Cpl, if CCF probably a LCpl (or from a CCF where the Contingent Commander and SSI are long in the tooth and don’t realise this changed years ago).
I don’t know when exactly the change was, I was a JCpl in 2002 and left CCF in 2004 when we still had them. When I came back in 2016 we had moved to LCpl and that had been the case for quite a while from what I could ascertain.
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I suppose there may still be people in the ATC world that think Cpls are actually J/Cpls until they’ve done their JNCO course. Therefore staff may have put J/Cpl until they do their course.
That was never an actual thing was it?
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Not sure to be honest if it was ever policy, certainly when I was a cadet it was always talked about a lot.
How does this work with RN Sections? The SCC rank structure is heavy with Junior Ranks with Petty Officer (equivalent to Sergeant) as their senior cadet rank.
RN sections use to use the rank of Coxswain for their senior cdt.
Not sure if RN sections use CPO rank as well - they do work differently from the SCC. Royal Marine cdts in CCF follow same as Army.
There were (probably are) some that used it as “in training”/“provisional”/“probationary” or other stepping stone to Cpl, but that was never official and should never have been carried outside the unit.
Fairy tale JCPL on Sqn, Cadet off Sqn.
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All of my Corporals were made aware that they were on probation for the first 3 months after promotion, I never felt the need to use made up rank slides or abbreviations though. I just made it clear “don’t mess up for the next 3 months!” 
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Same.
Works like the real world, too.
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