Alright fella, we have all done stuff.
[quote=“RearAdmiralScrinson, post:19, topic:3335, full:true”]
Once a week is a token effort. And is not sufficient. Especially if you want to take it seriously.
Back on topic but one night a week limits activites, and if the kids can’t make one, they can make the other.[/quote]
So how do you account for the Scouting movement which has been going for a while longer than the ATC (which only came into being to gap fill training for recruits in wartime) where groups only meet once a week? You don’t see evidence of a lack of opportunity or success.
WRT to youth sports, it’s only when they get a sniff at glory might they do more.
As for one night a week limiting activities and make one or the other night, if you only did one night a week they’d either join or not, dependent on their availability. The ATC tries to do too much in some ways and even on the most organised / staffed sqns it goes awry.
Successful sporty youngsters will only train more as they ascend the rankings. Our youngest daughter was a county runner and trained more often, our son wasn’t and didn’t do extra. I had 3 mates at school who were county and regional swimmers and were at the pool 3 times a week at 5.30am and 2 nights at 8pm. But these are unlikely to be in the ATC or other things which puts demands on their time.
My local ACF det tried 1 night of cadet training, and one night of staff admin.
An interesting idea, but I’ve no idea what the result was!
I dare say but you’re suggesting that 1 parade is not sufficient which is clearly not the case with us.
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I suggested that 1 night a week for martial arts was not sufficient.
Parade nights, have as many as you want. I see benefits for both.
When I was a cadet the Squadron was open 4 days a week, 2 normal parade nights, Rifle Drill team and Band on seperate extra nights.
Almost all the NCO’s did 3 nights a week.
Thousand apologies - we were at cross purposes
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Most squadrons with bands do extra for band practice and we used to do extra nights for rifle drill squad training, mainly in the run up to competitions and displays.
Interesting that this question is being raised elsewhere.
The only reason I can see for two nights is “we’ve always done it like that”. This however is a recipe for disaster. Keep on doing things just because you’ve always done it that way is not really a reason.
I never really understood or had it explained where the 12 hours/month came from, as we are not employed, not salaried and have no contract to enforce the 12 hours rule. Also the 12 hours rule only applies to uniformed staff. Like so many things it seems it’s a club rule and we just blindingly just go along with it and not question it.
Back in the early days ADCC/ATC IIRC my uncle (member when the ADCC changed to ATC) said they used to meet once a week and spend every other weekend at the local RAF airfield. They couldn’t do more than one night as there were 140 of them on the squadron and were split into 3 flights. They did all the training they had to and he said the staff used to be assigned to a flight, apart from the CO.
The organisation seems to do far more things at the weekend than I remember as a cadet and I did a lot of sport for the Corps, which meant doing things at the weekend. But there wasn’t all the training/courses that staff do or training/courses for cadets. We did the occasional AT thing at the weekend and in the football season a crowd of us would meet up for a kick around on a Sunday morning.
When I posed this a few weeks ago, the main message seemed to be “we’ve always done it like that”, so only a historic precedent and there’s so much to get done, which begs the question why do we (or more correctly HQAC) seem to think we need to do so much?
There is a lot of white noise emanating from the top about valuing volunteers, maybe the one way to value them is to reduce the time burden. Make it so there is only the need to do one night a week. Today there are so many shared buildings, doing one night would make those arrangements far, far easier.
Adults seem to have much busier lives now and the cadets seem to be under constant pressure from school, that maybe one night a week, would make the organisation more attractive generally to adults and parents. Although probably not wanted when they are looking to cut costs.
[quote=“Teflon, post:34, topic:3335”]
Like so many things it seems it’s a club rule and we just blindingly just go along with it and not question it.[/quote]
Although we do “blindly go along with it” it is also accepted it is not difficult to achieve.
Most uniformed CFAVs will either have been a Cadet or CI prior to Uniform commitment.
As a Cadet turning up twice a week and the odd weekend is not unusual to continue doing as Staff.
As there is an expectation that a period as a CI is the norm (in most cases) prior to uniform then committing twice a week and the odd weekend is also not difficult to accept – and as those CIs looking for a uniform position wish to appear “keen” then they are likely to approach with a “maximum involvement”.
Completing 12 hours is not difficult. On the assumption the evening is 1900-2130 it only takes 5 evenings to complete, one night over 50% attendance which does not seem unreasonable.
However break this down: if ~50% attendance gets the 12 hours done – why have double that number by parading twice a week?
On the one hand this gives reason to cut down to one evening a week > if we can achieve the HQAC expected minimum with one evening a week why bust a gut to attend/run a parade night twice a week?
On the other hand it is seen as a minimum which is easily achievable, and done so purposely. The line in the sand set so “low” that the majority of Staff can achieve this without noticing it and only those who are showing very little commitment can be deemed as “not achieving”
If you are running a full and diverse training programme I just don’t see how you fit it all in to 1 night a week. We struggle with 2 and are looking at opening up an extra night per fortnight just to run the range for those who want to shoot of an evening. If we went down to 1 night a week the syllabus training would either have to be run every night for months or would go on all year round, not sure that would help with retention!
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Just because there is 2 nights. Doesn’t mean the kids need to go to both.
It’s not a big deal. Some sqns do 2 nights. Some do 1.
If you can see the benefit of adding a night, go for it. If you can see the benefit of decreasing a night, go for it.
It’s not rocket science.
I have cadets who can only do 1 night a week, if I cut the unit to 1 night a week I’d end up losing them completely. It’s a nuisance Babi g cadets who aren’t about every night but inevitably one of the 2 commitments will “win” and traditionally it will be the ATC in my experience.
Our unit will be moving to 1 parade night a week during the Summer holidays for 2018 due to traditionally low cadet attendance and to give the staff a break but an expansion of that idea was entertained. I can see pros and cons for both arguments but my concern has been staff burnout which makes the proposal more attractive.
Yes, we’re here for the cadets first and foremost, but if we haven’t the staff to provide the opportunities then the overall cadet experience suffers as a result.
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As mentioned already, we manage it fine.
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Sounds like my cadet days. We didn’t have diverse training programmes or activities every / every other weekend. We did 2 nights a week that consisted of drill and classifications practically every night, with ranges and maybe some other things on an ad hoc basis and we still turned up and there are still a number of us kicking around in the Corps today. I don’t ever remember seeing or even hearing about a training programme, even into my early years as staff, given that it would have had to have been typed or handwritten. We did 2 nights, but we didn’t have the distractions associated with modern life (other than TV) or pressure from school. Homework was done mostly at the weekend and I remember spending Saturdays in the local reference library … no internet for looking things up. It seems like a much simpler and easier time and I don’t think that the ATC took over the lives of staff, or not in our squadron.
Look at the organisation today and I’d lay money in every single Wing there will be people filling their time doing things as they feel the cadets need to be doing something and ignoring the cadets’ or their need to rest and have time relaxing. One sad story is a lady from the Scouts I know who has recently stopped doing it, as she did lots with Scouts and Guides and her father ‘got’ dementia and she hadn’t really spent the time with him (work and hobby) and now he doesn’t know her properly and she is determined to spend more time with her mum and dad who lives 20 or so miles away and her family, as she lost sight of the important things. Some will say the cadets want to do things so they do things to appease the cadets, tbh when I was a teenager I didn’t need the ATC organising my life, I had plenty of things I could be doing, like going around with my mates. I think in many ways squadrons interpret the message from HQAC as you need to do lots and lots, squadrons then compare themselves to other squadrons (or more correctly Wing compare one squadron with other squadrons) and feel they have to do more and this then snowballs.
There has been a lot of discussion about recruitment and retention of staff and you have to wonder if at any point the people running the Corps have taken a step back to look at the Corps and wonder if the demands incited on staff to do more things, is why recruitment and retention of staff (except from within) is so bloody difficult. As a sqn cdr you are almost forced into insisting that staff do courses and then keep on keeping on at them as there is an insistence that people “develop”.
Personally I think 2 nights can be a bit of a bind. At our Sqn we tend to get over hurdles by having training days on Saturdays/Sundays. I would prefer to go to a one night a week scenario with a sqn trg day every 4-6 weeks.
Hmmmm, got me thinking.
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I don’t really get what point you are trying to make here?
It’s no longer the 1970’s and you won’t retain cadets by just doing Air Recce and Drill, nor would you retain any staff as they would get just as board and go eslewhere.
Now the question of whether we should be customer driven (do what the cadets want) is a difficult one.
We have training aims and need to meet them which takes up a lot of our time as a unit, what we do with the rest of the time is a balancing act between what the staff what to run and what the cadets want to do. (Afterall their is no point in planning a weekend activity if no one is going to show up).
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Agree on this point.
We do need variety, but we need to the consistency. And maybe do with teaching kids that sometimes you just have to get on with the boring stuff before all the fun.
That’s an important life skill.
But yea, you can’t fall into the trap of just slogging through the syllabus.
Not having been there (I imagine) in the 70s you wouldn’t really understand it, having more social freedom (for want of a phrase), we didn’t need to have our time planned to nth degree or activities every weekend, which is where the Corps seems to have ended up.
We were like generations before us, imo, a lot more independent and having children now in their late 20s/early 30s I remember from the time they were 7/8 on, we made them go out and not come back until later, which confused some of their friend’s parents, which confused us as they were a similar age to us.
We cannot be a customer driven organisation, as there isn’t the staffing, funding or infrastructure and HQAC would fold within a month as the model for the Corps isn’t designed for the customer. We are a take it or leave it organisation and the youngsters stay or leave for many reasons and a major one is the mates they make. If you have a group who all get on, then they tend to stay, when they don’t get on they leave, regardless of what a squadron might lay on and then there is education and employment which affect staying in. We must have all had the fall out of leavers when for any number of teenager reasons they suddenly don’t get on and leave and not always related to the squadron. We have ‘customers’ who might expect to go flying or gliding and they don’t get it and I’ve lost cadets because of this, but there are out of our control. If we were a business we’d have been stuffed by trading standards if at any place in our advertising/promo it says anywhere cadets will fly at least once each year and they didn’t. I imagine in a few weeks we’ll have the almost annual story of a Christmas themed experience that isn’t.
The problem is do too much, staff get burnt out and without staff you can’t do anything. I can categorically say that not doing much in the Corps ever means I get bored. If people haven’t got areas of interest outside the organisation and are relying on the Corps to fulfil their lives, it doesn’t say much for the people staffing it.