Specialists. Generalists. Somewhere in between?

Adult Staff Staff Development
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The new Fieldcraft Policy and ever shifting training requirements and prerequisites for other courses has got me thinking about our Core offer, about our over arching training policy and, ultimately, the corresponding staffing requirements.

If you successfully join the RAFAC today, having dealt and navigated the tedium of forms and BS, attended your AVIP, your basic course, perhaps done Heartstart or FAAW and, for the lucky ones, MOI, what next?

What does your squadron need you to do? What does the Wg need? And what do you want to do? You could very quickly find yourself being courted by the various “training teams” from within the Wg. Exploring Fieldcraft, Shooting, AT, Music, NCO leadership and development, First Aid, Training, Radio/Cyber, Music, Road Marching…

To get “qualified” to deliver many of these elements, the time commitment is often significant - even if it’s just “shadowing” a few courses. This might let you deliver some Blue PTS stuff - but with the increasing drive from cadets to progress (and rightly so), then we need people to deliver Bronze.

Its more weekends away - but suddenly you’re in a “niche” team. When you’re doing that, you’re not doing Sqn stuff. Bringing pressure from your OC.

This pressure, and these teams, have almost always existed. But as we move to a greater and higher level of “standardisation” - so demanding more time - is there a net effect on staffing? At a time when we are already experiencing a huge decline in staff numbers, is taking staff away from sqns to deliver these courses what we need?

And can we realistically manage and meet cadet expectations? In a Wg of 1000 cadets, we are looking at 4-6 bronze weekend courses per year in each of the PTS core areas. Those courses will have 12-20 cadets on them. Meaning we might offer 10% of cadets a bronze course. Again, there will be a staffing impact in running more courses - be they at sector or wing level.

Should there be more of a focus on “generalist” training - enabling people to upskill to deliver all Blue subjects before specialising?? Or should we simply embrace the fact that we need, not just staff, but more training for specialist staff to deliver this evolving “core offer” - at the expense of squadrons.

Or, is this another move towards staff pooling at sector level and the move towards super squadrons - staff not linked directly to 1 Sqn, but to a Sector Commander to support and deliver their niche across 3-6 squadrons in their area???

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Ive always been a firm believer that the ideal situation would be a cadre of staff that are not attached to sqns that are a training team at wing level whos responsibility is to train said staff member in what ever specialism they wish.

Albeit i know this is if we can have an ideal structure and not deal with the massive shortful in staff the corps. This means there is a dedicated source of training.

Or

The corps spends some dollar to set up a similar process to CTC Frimley park that provide speciallity training away from ATF that focuses on basic training.

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I think it’s a case of a little of each - a jack of all trades and a master of one (or two).

Have the core knowledge to deliver most things to blue level, and then the specialist skills to do higher levels in one or two other things.

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This is my pet hate with the Corps right now.

Not all of us can committ or take part in the way described above. But we can deliver good stuff for the Cadets at Squadron. And not all Cadets can commit the time at weekends.

We need to go back a little, make sure most of the core training can be delivered at the Squadron, by the ‘generalists’.

Then have the more in depth / specialist courses done at Wing level by people who have committed to do the extra.

Presenting a situation to new staff that looks like they have a massive mountain to climb to deliver anything for the Cadets will only drive them away.

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I can see a lot more pooling at Sector/joint squadron level - we’ve already been doing that with some 1st Class, Blue PTS, 1st Aid, and FT training for a few years now.

As for staff, we’ve just taken on a few new ones and one is keen to go the AT route, which is great for us as it’s a need. They are also interested in FT, and prior experience makes them a great asset for Classification Training. However, I will be keeping a keen eye on who tries to pull them in how many directions. I would be encouraging them to focus on Squadron training first, build up their AT quals and join the Wing AT team (a great deal of AT training for cadets is pooled at that level), and if they want to explore FT then great, but use it something “up their sleeve” to help out at local FT events. They have a lot of time available to offer, but that doesn’t mean they should use it all up!

I, myself, have found myself pulled in multiple directions across different disciplines for the past couple of years and am now looking to add weapons to my arsenal (get it?). However, the levels I’m reaching and my personal interests are showing a clear path on what to focus on and to what level.

This is where we are as a wing (and have been for a while):

3 Cadet Training Weekends per year, covering Cadet Induction, JNCO, SNCO, Cadet Drill Course, YFA, AVIP, MOI, Bronze & Silver Leadership, ILM L3 Course(1 per year), L144, L98, Bronze Radio, Pre Dep FT - all held simultaneously by specialist teams. Exact courses vary, but those in bold almost always run without fail.

2 Staff Weekends per year, options including, AVIP/MOI, ECO (will now be FCI pt1), L144 and L98 IWT, Blue Radio Assessor, AFA, Mental Health Awareness, Staff Leadership, Intro to DofE, Pre Uniform, Dangerous Goods, occasionally some others.

Staff AT Quals are achieved at other events.

I think this greatly depends on what that team offers and what their focus is - our “Wing” Teams (by default, not formal design) run events for all - large shoots take place around the wing, FT takes place around the wing either spearheaded or supported by those you’d consider the “Wing” staff, AT takes place locally by those fortunate enough to have their own staff and also at Wing level. If a member of a squadron’s staff is going to an event then they usually have the option to bring cadets.

Potentially, yes. We already have a format that works and fits relatively well into updates and standardisation. The specialist teams are the first to get their heads around any changes and are able to advise or assist roll out as necessary. (The current FT scenario being a slight challenge to that). The specialist staff, because a lot of the course delivery is centralised, are dotted around the wing and so haven’t developed in pockets.

Some further courses and events naturally are able to be offered outside of the above programme (FT, Shooting, FA, Radio…).

However, I can see that a wing reliant solely on isolated course deliveries (especially if in varied locations) where there’s a lot of overlap in individuals’ specialisms… it’s going to be more of a problem. I can also see that probably not everybody is going to be able to get 100-200 cadets and staff to a single location.

I kinda like this idea - especially for staff who are interested in delivering training, but don’t know which direction they want to take. However, much like cadets, I would suggest that there’s no rush to be able to do everything. Now that we have more staff on the squadron, we have the resources to be able to provide training and coaching to our staff in-house, so our focus will be on the 1st Class Syllabus first, then the Blue PTS subjects. After that they can progress or not as they like.

Our format seems to do that reasonably well. People do miss out, but they know when the next opportunity will be. Again, I encourage cadets to do as much as they can, but they don’t have to do it all as quickly as possible.

And I don’t think anybody close to our level has an expectation otherwise. Without generalist Squadron training, the specialist training couldn’t occur.

Then don’t present that. We don’t have an expectation on them to be able to do everything, however we should explain their options. A frank conversation along the lines of “you can do this if you want to, but we need you to be able to do this first (or at least as well as that)” has treated me reasonably well. As I said above, the other stuff can’t happen without the Squadron stuff, and the squadron is the best opportunity for them to interact with cadets.

If someone is coming in already eyeing up getting away from Squadron Training, then I’d have alarms flashing.

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Last year there was general message at our CO conference that we are doing or trying to do too much.
I can go back to my cadet and early staff days and I do not remember this constant pressure to be doing as much as we seem to think we need to do now. As I recall the only weekend things were AT and sport (if you were involved), but now an almost constant run of activities / courses for staff and cadets which are draining and ignore that adults have full and rich lives not to mention jobs, outside the ATC.

I’ve been criticised that cadets don’t do Wing / sector courses/activities. However parents can’t/won’t take them expecting us to, or, the cadets want to do their own thing or aren’t or don’t seem interested. I have made it clear to one parent in particular we are not a taxi service for their child. Then we have the increasing broken families with multitudes of people demanding time with them.

Has anyone at HQAC asked the cadets what they want?
Has anyone at HQAC asked the staff what they want?
Bearing in mind no one from HQAC has to commit to do them, other than turn up for a selfie.

I do wonder when new staff are presented with a wadge of do this, this, this, this before you can really begin to be a member of staff and by the way if you want to do something else then you need to do … what do they really think they’ve joined. I wonder if anyone at HQAC has ever looked into what the expectations are just to become a CI and does it really encourage people to become volunteer adult staff.

The idea of pooling staff has been discussed in earnest at the last 2 sector meetings and while we are OK with the idea in theory, we have, quite rightly, said what about the effect on individual squadrons on parade nights and weekends, as we few at the meeting have said, ask us to do a night here or there and likewise a weekend, then we won’t be at the squadron on our parade nights and weekends might take a hit. Which could affect squadrons opening. Either that or we want it written somewhere that staff doing it get the time off no questions asked, as we do this voluntarily.

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this, this and once more for good measure this!!

personally i have only “specialist” interest in the PTS topics - first aid for instance i have no interest in other than holding a ticket which allows me to do what I want to.

I believe as a Unit, a Squadron yes we should all have the ability to be self-sufficient to teach blue - but of course this means the team of Staff each need to be a “specialist” if only to blue level - even to teach blue level there is a “authorization” process.
heartstart requires a Wing course, Radio needs approval from the Wing Radio Officer, Shooting requires the same for blue as it does for Gold.

there is no quick win, or easy answer.

I certainly believe all Staff (particularly) uniformed should be able to pick up any First Class lesson should an instructor not make it to Squadron, but the PTS system, even at blue requires an interest in that “specilism” to want to dedicate the time to get on a course or other Wing approval in some form and is not so straightforward to be a “jack of all trades” as a Blue instructor for the individual…