Clays? Scattering hundreds of pieces of lead shot around in the hope that one might hit something! 
You mean the skill of dealing with a moving target rather than just laying in a room aiming at static bits of paper 
Room?? Er, letās see how your shotgun performs at 1000 yardsā¦ 
At least I can move my shotgun, my ammo and my cadets without 4 vehicles and 8 staff!
The policy has been there for a long time as it is stipulated by DofE and as an LOA we need to comply with that. A lot of ACO ran BEL courses combine the ESTC into the teaching as the ESTC covers some of the requirements for BEL plus more but meaning you can go on to supervise DofE Expeds.
But the main point is itās a DofE policy not ACO we just need to implement it, any ESTC will do so not even one that the ACO provides, bearing in mind an ACO one will be subsidised if not free
I think youāll find that HQAC have specified that we have to have an ACO run course.
Parky, a miscommunication has occurred.
The actual policy is fine, so I was wrong to say that whoever authored it was living on another planet.
Itās the implementation that has been reckless. Not reckless with safety, but reckless with the morale and motivation of the volunteers. Itās another of HQACās favourite no-notice but instant-enforcement policies, announced late in the day when any good leader would have already planned their programme for the year.
Iāve been aware of the policy since at least October last year, I think your WATTO or RATTO have some questions to answer.
Daws That Iām not going to argue as I donāt know our exact policy on the matter but it seems to be a pointless barrier as the ESTC has to be ran by approved DofE trainers anyway.
Jacques I agree with daws that your RATTO or WATTO has only just picked up on this and put it in place. ESTC has been a must have for at least a year and is talked about in both leader handbooks and also on the ItDofE course, so surly in your planning for the next season you would of found a suitably qualified DofE Supervisor, if not speak to your wings DofE officer they should know who has completed the course and can assist you, I know in my wing most assessors have done ESTC as well, but not all.
The biggest problem I can see is that ATC is again playing catch up and not offering the āupgradeā for the old style BEL that is apparently required.
And as Jaques said āanother of HQACās favourite no-notice but instant-enforcement policiesā.
A broader concern is that HQAC seem to keep being caught napping with things like this.
With respect to shooting and levels of clearance required and nothing more than a (frankly embarrassing) begging letter from CAC got us a reprieve as it was apparent HQAC knew about it and had ignored it.
FMS has been made a full on qualifying course and another course to run overnight things (why youās do an overnight FMS baffles me) and again a policy almost backdating it, thus no real time to implement this. Apparently we canāt do any FMS with cadets until people have done the courses.
I remember when we all needed a minimum BEL to do AT, there was a 2 year timeframe with grandfather rights.
I work in a heavily regulated industry and if the same lacksadasical approach was taken by my company as is by HQAC, wrt changing policy and imposing things on staff WITHOUT the required training, lead time etc weād be down the job centre. Given we volunteer a degree of realism / sanity needs to be taken into account by the ACMB, rather than this is how it is and if you havenāt ticked this box you canāt do it. Whose bloody side are they on?
The ACO isnāt playing catchup, they have flagged an option for people with sufficient experience to continue until 2018 without this course. The policy has been out their since at least last Autumn, if people have problems with this itās due to local command WATTOs to be exact.
FMS doesnāt need to be a full on qualifying course for local training, you just need to authorised by your Wing Commander (or nominated person). If you want to run exercises you need an ECOās course. The fact you didnāt before was an error, the new system is actually much simpler than the last one.
I canāt imagine that the DofE just announced this, so in that respect regardless of local communication problems, there is a degree of catch-up. If the DofE announced it last year, things should have been started to be put in place immediately with local contacts to do it outside the Corps given it would be unlikely that enough course places would or could be put in place to satisfy demand. Letās face it by 2018 on a Wing or Region basis if there were enough courses to get everyone to where they should be it would be nothing short of miraculous.
In a wave genius the ACO has now decreed in the revised ACTO74 that we must submit a green form to Wing as part of the application for all DofE Expeditions, irrelevant of the Level or whether we will be in Wild Country.
So a form that is only designed to be sent to the DofE for Wild Country expeditions is now required by the ACO for a Bronze Practice. This after the Commandant questioned publicly how we had dropped below the Scouts in terms of awards achieved! 
Of the four pinnacle activities that I believe we do, shooting is often controlled by the army and leaves us little wriggle room but how we operate DofE IS within our control and some of the recent edicts should be robustly challenged.
Howās Daws, who says that scouts are safe in operating DofEā¦? Results donāt equal quality ;Ā£
I whole heartedly agree that this new requirement is ridiculous overkill. How are we meant to know what cadets will turn up for a practice at least 4 weeks before the event, let alone will then want to complete the Qualifying. we tend to run a qualifying about 2-3 weeks after the practice before they have forgotten all the practical skills, so cant confirm who will be in what group till after the practice. We train everyone in the core Exped skills so cant use that as a filter.
Does anyone know where to find the manual on āhow to challenge silly amendments to ACPsā?
Cheers all (another nail in the coffin of my ATC career)
Malc
OK so weāve dropped the number of awards, so put more admin into the mix. ONLY an adminner (such as the current and previous CAC) would see that as a solution. Blinding logic.
You would think you would want to make things easier ā¦ reduce red tape rather than increase it. But then Iām not a professional paper shuffler. We really do have some consummate solid gold, platinum plated idiots in the CoC.
That document says it was last modified in 2015 though? So is this a very recent change or something old that we werenāt aware of?
Interesting question, it was pointed out to me by a colleague in another wing. Who has just had it flagged as a requirement. Either way itās a ridiculous waste of time and effort. (Especially if like me you are running Expeds for 50+ cadets at Bronze Level).
50 plus cadets, wow that is some undertaking, even before this pointless new admin burden. How do you cope with varying the routes/campsites for that number of groups, let alone managing such a large team of assessors and supervisors. We sometimes struggle when we get to three groups!
At Bronze Level we use 1 campsite for the whole lot. I have 2 start points one NE and one NW. I then run 3 routes in from each (they will be similar and will cross over in places, but with enough variety and dog legs that the cadets canāt just follow each other. Day 2 is the same routes in reverse, so if you start NE you end NW for example.
We then use a separate campsite in a different part of the county in the same way for the assessed expeditions.
We have the practice teams accompanied on day 1 with the member of staff being picked up if and when they are satisfied the group are in OK shape. We have 2 safety vehicles out (1 each side of the campsite). If we have assessed groups out the Assessor will have a separate vehicle out just to assess.
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