Oh they’re different things? I thought they were only doing a space-y one! But if the plane-y one comes out before I leave the corps (big if), then I’ll definitely try do that one 
How long before you turn 65?
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This timeline needs to be merged with the dates pushed out by Wg Cdr PR on Valuing Our People for added comic effect!
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Was just going to point people to that thread on Valuing Our People 
@Ben_Wakefield Can you ‘rattle a few cages’ please? We are 11 days away from the promised launch date of the new BTEC - a date that was postponed from Sept 2025 - and it appears to be radio silence from HQAC again.
Like many others, I’m starting to fear this is going to end up in the growing ‘never happened’ pile!
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It appears the same conversation that’s been happening every year for the last 3 (?) years?
Some sort of ‘sorry not ready this year but we’ll hit the ground running next year’, and then nothing.
Question; do the ACF or SCC still have a BTEC of sorts that they deliver internally?
Isn’t it great that we’re only 6 weeks away from the 4 year anniversary?
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Devils advocate mode on.
As an organisation we are a youth club and not an educational establishment, should we spending lots of time and some money (Wales Govt not funding BTEC in RAFAC) and lots of effort in offering BTECs to our cadets for a small number getting a smaller return in the number of passes? Shouldn’t we leave it to the Cadet Vocational college?
Devils advocate mode off.
We’re the air TRAINING Corps. Training people is what we do.
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Yep, I know of quite a few cadets where the extra UCAS points from the BTEC have been very beneficial.
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Isn’t it a level 2 qual? I thought only level 3 got points for some reason.
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I kind of get where you’re coming from - I think there’s definitely benefit in some of the training we do that doesn’t award a nationally recognised qualification and that’s ok. We should embrace that. Not everything has to award a qualification.
But when there’s a BTEC up for grabs for cadets participating in our normal syllabus, and this is an added bonus for them finishing it, then why not? For many cadets, this will be earned by them regularly attending and paying attention at their units.
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I agree, we have our classification training but most of the volunteers in the ATC are not qualified educators. we have many gifted and and able trainers who provide a wealth of training in a positive and engaging way. But, in the past we as an organisation struggled to complete BTECs to the satisfaction of the provider, Pearson. Lacking a proper process of completion and verification. Which resulted in the award being pulled.
Unless we can upskill our staff to effectively deliver outside awards with Level 3 and Level 4 awards in Education and Training, delivery will remain patchy.
One of the caveats that Pearson originally asked for is that all internal verification must be done by paid staff and not the volunteer. We currently do not have the paid staff with the capacity to do that.
I agree that providing proper qualifications to our cadets has benefitted many and it is something that the cadet forces should provide. It is a good sell to parents to get their children to join but… do we have the capacity and ability at the unit level to provide it?
Looking forward I can see the BTEC in aviation studies being a part of the new QAIC/Aviation gold course which will be run in a similar way to the gold leadership that has happened this year.
At least when I was applying to uni in 2016 it didn’t count for UCAS points. A lot of Unis only consider your top three anyway eg. ABB.
Did list it on my list of qualifications though and improved my general extracurricular section.
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This is why it worked so well before. We had cadets doing their normal training, then, after doing a little bit extra at the end they got a proper qualification to show what they’ve done whilst in the ATC.
It was a way of formally proving the work done as part of the classification syllabus, plus some extra.
There will be another year’s cohort of the L3 epq being advertised for very shortly, at least!
What was the uptake of the BTEC in aviation studies before it was paused?
if it was massively high uptake then ok look at reintroduction but if the % of eligible cadets were not taking it up then is their continued business justification particularly if there is a cost?
Everyone was automatically enrolled in it, so I’m not sure i understand the question. If you left before finishing you didn’t get it (although latterly there was a “light” version if you did Leading, IIRC), but if you stayed a cadet and got all the way to Master you got the BTEC.
I had quite a few who got master but not the btec - was it something that had to be claimed rather automatically issued?
I would be interested to know how many were actually achieved for each year it was running.
We had a process where our Wing BTEC Officer would claim after every exam (when done on the paper version) and every quarter when done electronically.
All our cadets gained a BTEC in AS up to the ‘pause’/
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