Looking at running a cadre - the Squadron hasn’t run one in many a year.
Can anyone share the basics of what one covers and how they run theirs?
This isn’t really answering your question, but we don’t run them. In theory, most of what we expect from them should be covered as part of normal cadet life anyway. E.g. reinforcing behaviours, uniform standards, drill training, leadership etc. We sometimes do some focused training for individuals who have asked for feedback, but that’s always part of a general activity.
I would also be hesitant to identify a “potential NCO cadre”. Every cadet should be a potential NCO, and by applying some criteria you could be wrongly excluding people.
Also posted here
Base elements
Command task
Presentation skills
Drill instruction
Leadership theory
Base principles
Clean sheet approach
Inspections on each parade night
Everyone leads a command task which test a particular leadership aspect.
Presentational skills - assign a single word topic not related to air cadets to promote the need to research & avoid temptation to wing it.
Either run on a weekend (leadership & Drill focus) or across several parade nights. The later is preferable as it allows cadets to improve each week but it’s more intensive on resources
As you run it as a cadre the training develop from a nucleus so
Year 1 - heavy staff involvement, cadet NCOs as runners & logistics
Year 2 staff involved, cdt NCOs help run, cadets from year 1 act as logs/runners
Year3 - staff teach leadership & supervise rest. Year 1 cdts act as course directing NCOs, Year 2 act as logs/runners
Year 4. Staff as course directors & quality assurance, year 1 cadets lead, year 2 run & teach course, year 3 logs/runners
A leadership cadre is a training course where you have a nucleus and it then develops from there - pretty much all the cadets go through the cadre unless there’s a good reason (which is mainly due to age/length of service/& sometimes development & even then it’s a delaying of a year)
A PNCO cadre is not a direct assessment t but a development course with the bonus it allows the staff a greater opportunity to gather info on cadets who potential may apply as NCOs & allows the cadet NCOs to develop as D.S. & coach their successors.
However It is always very Sqn specific though, tailored to the command culture & philosophy & specific needs of a Sqn but it’s a good way to get a fair base line for the cadets. 
In my wing ive shifted the nco course syllabus to pre jnco and pre snco training. And we just follow the traditional syllabus.
Because you know, we should really train before putting people into roles.
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We’re still ‘you have to be in rank to apply’ hence the need to deliver on unit
Thank you. I did a few searches but ‘PNCO’ wasn’t one I tried
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I think it depends on how your wing courses are structured - if they are a standardisation course then it should be for those in rank or are just about to be promoted.
Otherwise it just ends up with CO pushing their promotion decisions onto wing.
If wing is a training & development course then sqns should do a bit of pre training but fine to leave to wing.
Personally I would tilt to wing courses being standardisation as there just wouldn’t be the capacity to deliver to the amount of cadets needed. Having said that if you are having an issue of multiple sqns sending attendees that don’t meet the standard you want, you do need to find a way to cascade that standard. 
Also and I think this is quite common, certainly I’ve seen threads here about it, not all NCOs will get a place on a Wing NCO course. It’s a pure numbers thing.
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Ours is pretty much open to all of those at least first class with at least 12 months in.
We make it optional though.