There is a dedicated M Qual at Frimley Park for RAFAC each Feb and we can apply for places on a top up basis to their other courses.
I can’t see the SATTs delivering it though.
It could be delivered by SATTs, but would need upskilling first.
However, many SATTs are struggling to fill the existing courses…
I guess that depends on the SATT, our K Quals seem to always have a waiting list!
Isn’t it? We already changed it for AT?
I did a lot of work for SATTs to be able to deliver M Qual and ultimately we have an issue with currency in delivery of the course.
As a SATT may only run one per year the instructors would need more CPD and wouldn’t be slick at running it to the right standard. With instructor turnover etc it adds complication.
Adding a dedicated RAFAC week at Frimley has fixed that and we are struggling to fill that in year 2.
RAFAC people can also be reserves on the ACF M Quals throughout the year.
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I think that’s because you are in AT kit and not performing military skills.
Yeah, and that was the change that we brought in.
The decision to change it was made by the Regional Commandants, they have that power as the DDH, it’s only once they had all made it an exemption that HQAC changed the policy.
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Arguably, running round a wood with paint on playing capture the flag isn’t really military skills. Anything involving weapons seems fair but to teach how to put a small tarpaulin up is overkill.
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Most cadets never get further than “aggresive camping”
Weapons are nice and would be good to get the full experience but lets face it tends to fall into the too difficult box
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The advantage of a ‘proper syllabus’ means that those that do get to the point of using CWS will (hopefully) have the same base level of FC training. So it should make it easier to organise more higher level FC stuff, I think?
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airsoft?
Interesting.
Maybe we can discuss further over PM?
By all means.
I’m not convinced - if everything was free, then great, but if ‘doing it properly’ creates agro and huge staff training demands, and because of the incoming financial cuts the top level stuff dwindles, then I don’t see the point.
I have provided the really high end stuff - blank firing FIBUA with smoke and TF’s, and live firing in a field firing range - and I really understand the benefits the cadets got from it: the skills, the responsibility , the confidence, the massive, face-splitting grins that lasted for a week, but I take the view that if the ability to give a tiny percentage of cadets these experiences effectively throttles more basic stuff that provides weekends for the other 99.98% of kids in the ACO, then it’s counterproductive.
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You have to pour so much time, staff and resources in order to get actual benefit from it in my experience. Outside of JL, this organisation will struggle to deliver that.
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Although pretty reductionist, it does help highlight the slight catch 22 we’re in:
We want to make it easier to deliver, but maximise the training value which requires a certain degree of competency and consistency in delivery - there’s a big difference between a good C&C lesson and a bad one.
One of the reasons I think the clamp down and tightening of who can instruct was needed (although we reached that point through other motivations) was the pervasiveness of attitudes like this that weren’t ironic or deliberately downplaying the subject for effect. I’m pretty sure pEp would want to see the lessons delivered effectively and is just boiling CPT down to base elements, but there were a lot who didn’t have a professional approach to training or the desire of expertise to maximise efficacy, and genuinely treated fieldcraft as a “slap this on your face and pretend you’re Solid Snake” crutch activity.
A similar fight happens with leadership, where PLTs are used as time fillers with no goal or feedback for development.
When activities are used this way, and the foundational theory hasn’t been treated with respect, these applications get old fast. Without a standard to hit or a review to reflect on, cadets do lose motivation to take part in these activities.
And this is another part of our catch-22. We’ve lost a large number of our basic skills instructors over the years through natural attrition or not wanting to requal. The higher stuff is fed by the lower stuff, and the benefits of the higher stuff is contingent on the quality of the lower stuff. The higher stuff motivates cadets to continue, but the quality of the lower stuff is a motivator first.
If we want our 99.98% that won’t reach the likes of JL or other large scale/B&P events to benefit, the quality needs to be there as well as the quantity.
We can’t magic new instructors out of thin air - at least not for all of it, because at a certain point the book just doesn’t give you the information to teach, just how to structure it.
This needs to be fixed from the top down and perhaps the policy will do that. I don’t think there is the capacity locally in a lot of places to put direct effort into staff-centric events without cadets missing out. I have a feeling that CACE and VA changes are going to make this a very large challenge to overcome.
I’d be happy for blue to be any CFAV and would hope that some more detailed instructor guides come along with that. Above that I’d be happy with FTOs signing off instructors to the different levels based on a options between prior knowledge and experience, attendance and observation at that level of exercise, staff training events.
I would be happy to return to a standalone ECO course for planning and supervision as a bolt on for any instructor, potentially* with the caveat that you can’t plan above your instructor level (perhaps unless you have a higher graded ECO as deputy while deployed). Provided I’m grandfathered and don’t have to deal with it, or at most have to attend a short Teams meeting.
(*might depend on how the levels are split, but I think there are lessons that the supervisor needs to be familiar with to ensure safe delivery, although not necessarily all of them. Of course, it’s moot anyway if there aren’t graded instructor levels.)
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Might be slightly off topic question, the M qualification course requires WHT on Pyro to attend how do you get this WHT.?
As a 16yo cdt cpl I was given this book and used it teach the basic walks and crawls, hand signals, and patrol / section formations to cadets.
This foundation served me well and led to me being mistaken for an ex-regular* when I joined the TA few years later. As a lcpl in the TA, I was given a slide deck based on the very same book to teach recruits.
Having something standard to teach from makes all the difference (over making it up / passing on bad habits) but, unless you’re dealing with weapons and pyro, it really doesn’t take much more.
*Details coming back to me, my prior knowledge of A-H and SCRIMM led to my phase 1 instructors asking if I’d done a NI tour.