Even Ive found myself of recent wondering if the juice worth the squeeze anymore
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I think it’s the ATC mindset or not fixing the problems.
After / during Covid the sea cadets but a load of resources into recruitment & retention do when things lifted they were able to crack on.
The ACF remodelled afterwards & is slightly growing.
We’ve done nothing the result is less recruitment & growth whilst still trying to do what we use to. We’ve failed to change & adapt.
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I don’t know whether or not this would reflect across the whole of the Air Cadets, but some of the older staff took Covid as an opening to leave in my experience. Perhaps that is a factor also?
It could be.
It could also be that some people who would have left in 2020/21 didn’t because of the various lockdowns, but had we been operating as usual would have been natural wastage.
We then get the double blip of them leaving and the impact of no one joining during the Covid period.
Absent of exit interviews or a detailed survey there’s no way to know.
But my feeling - and I can only go on my gut and what I’ve seen locally - is that the decline may have started before Covid and we might have seen a smaller YOY drop spread out over more years if it weren’t for lockdowns.
We’d still be where we are now in terms of leavers but maybe a bit better off if we’d been able to recruit or keep staff cadets.
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For comparison I thought I would post the CCF CFAV numbers
What’s interesting is the steady numbers except army which I assume is down to CEP.
For comparison, these are cadet numbers
Air Training Corps
2013: 45 570
2014: 44 020
2015: 43 270
2016: 43 270
2017: 41 470
2018: 41 520
2019: 43 520
2020: 44 430
2021: 37 010
2022: 35 610
2023: 40 770
2024: 43 260
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Seems fairly stable to me.
I was surprised and impressed by the recovery post covid tbh. 8k cadets in 2 years is pretty good going.
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Seriously impressive to be honest. An obvious, and expected drop from 2020 to 2022 from Covid, which is not surprising. But an amazing recovery from 22 to 24.
I know loads of units have been putting in a lot of work to get cadets through the door since covid, so this really shows that has worked, in spite of HQ actions and the reduction in number of CFAV.
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Even more interesting:
I know I few units that have put very little work into getting cadets through the door, and they’re still getting loads of recruits.
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I think the maintenance of cadet numbers is simply down to a societal behaviour that HQAC can’t manage out and has nothing to do with how appealing the RAFAC offer is.
Parents want their children supervised for them as cheaply as possible.
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Spot on
One of my friends sat their squadron commanders course during covid and one of the cohort asked the CoS, instead of putting in all these new courses online and in classrooms, have you thought about asking the cadets what they want to do, to which he got the response:
“If we asked the cadets what activities they want to do more of, they’d just say the activities they enjoy”
Ah that’s what that spike on the Richter scale in Lincolnshire was - the sound of the course chins collectively hitting the floor.
Cognitive dissonance, willful ignorance, or naivety?
They aren’t forced to be cadets, they pay to be cadets, if they don’t enjoy being a cadet then they will stop.
Hmm, sounds a bit like the staff situation - not paid, poorly reimbursed, here by choice.
Another example of the military way and mindset being completely antagonistic and inappropriate in a voluntary organisation.
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Give me strength…
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That’s a perfect illustration of the completely different mindsets of some senior HQAC leaders and most volunteers. Delivering for the RAF (or what they think the RAF and industry need) vs delivering for the cadets (and developing well rounded, confident young people)
After 30+ years in the organisation, I’ve seen a huge move over the last few years away from delivering for cadets. I always thought I’d be involved with the ATC for life, like so many friends and people that I admire. It’s not such an appealing option any more, sadly.
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This 
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