Big ticket activities benefit hundreds of Cadets each per year year (and last time I checked you couldn’t do more than 1 of them anymore).
If you add all those places up you are looking at around 2% of the entire organisation getting to go on a big ticket Camp each year. (More if you include RIAT, IACE and Nijmegen).
That is not an inconsiderable number of Cadets and importantly it’s your older Cadets who have already experienced local camps and local activities. If we don’t offer those activities, those opportunities to do different things then we will become stale and boring and they will leave and as I’ve said more than once that group of Cadets is where the majority of our Staff come from.
Both!
It’s the Staff’s hobby too, something which seems to be forgotten on a regular basis. You need to provide opportunities for Cadets, but you also need to provide opportunities and motivation for Staff too. Kicking staff in the teeth is not Valuing our Volunteers.
I would actually argue that those big camps we organise ourselves are going to be more important in the next few years then ever before, Annual Camps were dying as things were and they aren’t going to be back anytime soon. I reckon I’ve sent as many Cadets on Big Ticket Camps in the past few years as I’ve had Annual Camp spaces allocated to me. (I am quite good at scrounging more spaces for my Cadets but our actual allocation is 5 a year if we get lucky).
Indeed, that attitude still exists in places. I was also ridiculed when I refused to join a VGS as a FSC… probably didn’t help I used words to the effect of “I’m not taking the bins out and making you tea”.
I did intentionally say some would be willing to help
You’re right, first class training really was my highlight. I know for a fact that people consider getting a PPL, doing ACPS, completing their Gold DofE, doing JL, going on IACE, attending national camps etc as a highlight. All of these are things that are not offered to everyone. Some others consider an annual camp a highlight. Everyone is different.
It’s a slippery slope from “We won’t do a National Shooting Camp for 2 years to focus on local opportunities” to “we won’t offer Gold DofE it costs too much let’s just focus on delivering Bronze”
Playing Devil’s advocate on this, DofE have crashed the requirements Gold expeds, you can basically do in your backyard, no requirement for Snowdonia, etc.
BEL/LL qualms, no ML; makes things much cheaper.
Are we going to have the volume of cadets proficient enough at 25m small bore to maintain a strong value offer of LR shooting?
If “specialist” LR RCOs (for example*, and that do little else) want to do more LR then they might NEED to step down a bit beyond “enough to remain current” to up the throughput of the lower levels.
(*just taking the example highlighted - same for FT, Radio, ACLC DS, etc)
Some of these people may (and most probably already) do at least some lower level, but if you want to keep hold of your “big ticket” or specialist level activity then I think there will need to be added support further down to get that conveyor running again.
Most LR RCO’s are going to be running SR Full-bore at the very least in order to get Cadets able to go to a long range.
The big one with dialling back full bore shooting is that Small Bore has become quite a small activity with the lack of ranges and weapons.
Most of my Cadets tend to go straight from Air Rifle to L98 with very few doing any L144. I don’t know how representative that is across the Corps but certainly in my area if you were going to cut in order to improve position logic would say that binning Small Bore completely and focussing on L98 would pay greater dividends.
Even as a BEL I “drop down a peg” to teach IET or map and compass lessons.
I didn’t get my BEL to teach theory in a classroom but to everyone needs to learn to walk before they can run…at whatever level we’re considering
With certain AR particularly the magazine fed examples the drills follow the L98A2 format and so moving from AR to L98A2 is less of a step than learning the new way of single shot shooting with a L144 only to return to what they know for L98A2
I dont think any of this talk on what activities we ‘want’ to do is relevant.
I’m hearing that it is now being assumed that we will as an org we losing upwards of 50% of all volunteers. Now that’s CIs, uniform and registered committee, but still 50%!
Clearly us keenos on here have built strong sustainable Sqns, but that isnt the general picture. Far from it.
I dont think there will be choice on what we are allowed to deliver and the focus will be forced on us to shift back to basic on Sqn training.
We are far past the point of a minor blip or anything recoverable after one school year.
This closure for what has been for the majority a closure of now 10 months and likely to be 15 or so, will take an entire generation to recover. If we can.
Debating if LR shooting will be going ahead I think is the wrong question.
Ask, will shooting be going ahead.
Things definitely need to become simpler to deliver a better experience at Unit level.
Now is the time to get rid of the you must jump through a huge number of complex hoops to deliver an element the core experience. Facilitate, support and empower Sqns!!
Enabling this simplification will make the Sqns more appealing to Cadets and future CFAVs which makes that road to recovery a little less chicane like
Worrying stats but not what I have heard. Yes there are some staff that won’t return when we get back but 50% (6000 or more) would be really damaging. Where did you get those figures from cos we need to let ‘them’ know?
I’m more concerned about the Cadet headcount. I was on a wing VPN last night. 45 Cadets attended, given the event wasn’t shared by half the Sqns on CP. Extrapolate that to imagine every Cadet had the opportunity to attend it. that’s 90 Cadets, That’s 10% of a wing. You will probably say double that when f2f resumes - that’s still only 20%…is it an omen of things to come?
