Suggested Radical Overhaul of all Classification Training

Adult Staff The Staff Mess
1

I came up with this some time ago, but Incubus’ Radio Comms thread reminded me of it.

  1. Current issues. As I see it, there are a number of issues with our classification training syllabus as it stands:

a. The point. Nowhere in any of the articles which define the point of the ATC/ACO can I actually see anything which says that a significant proportion - if not even a majority - of our time is to be spent doing academic training towards a BTEC qual. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for formal recognition of what we do - but the tail increasingly seems to be wagging the dog in regards to the BTEC qual - and academic training is not really what we’re all about anyway. None of the three aims directly correspond to academic training - the closest we get is “skills useful in service/civilian life” which is highly questionable above first class to say the least, and “practical interest in aviation and the Royal Air Force” in which our syllabus misses the practical part and pretty much anything in the RAF that isn’t flying. Whilst first class training is required - and quite rightly standardised - for the cadet to be able to ‘operate’ in the ACO, at higher levels (basic nav excepted) the subjects are essentially taught for interest; cadets are unlikely to make practical use of the subjects during their cadet career.

b. The narrow focus. The cadet forces are best set up to deliver so-called ‘soft-skills’; leadership, teamwork, self-reliance, confidence, etc. Compared to academic training, we are better placed to deliver these, they’re more fun (crucial in a voluntary youth organisation) and don’t just replicate what cadets do in school anyway. However, our classification syllabus - a cadet’s main means of measuring progress - simply doesn’t cover these at all. We don’t even have a leadership theory subject!

c. Over-complicated and misdirected First Class training. As has been pointed out elsewhere (including at the link above) much of our first class training is either out-of-date, over-complicated or focussed on unimportant details to the detriment of core principles. For example, looking at the first class logbook, in Airmanship cadets are expected to name the arrestor gear and sterile areas on an airfield as a mandatory, pass criteria but what control surface actually affects what plane of movement in an aircraft is considered an extra, merit criteria and the throttle is not mentioned at all!

  1. My suggested changes:

    First class:
    Replace Map reading with basic nav (a composite of parts of current map reading and basic nav)
    Radio comms reduced in scope (remainder moved to leading cadet subject)
    Airmanship - stripped of most airfields knowledge and replaced with basic PoF.
    ATC, IET, RAF and HF – remain roughly unchanged

Leading:
6 subjects -
Basic Leadership theory (the Air Cadet Leadership Programme would be a good basis for this)
Advanced ground nav
PoF
AK
Radio comms (intermediate)
(additional subjects – see below)

Sen/Mas:
6 subjects -
Current subjects +
RAF Regiment
RAF Fire service
Logs
Medical
RAFP
Advanced leadership theory
(additional subjects – see below)

Additional subjects:
Additional weapon type - 1 subject (1 per level, additional may be saved up for next level, eg completing no8 before first class and l98 before leading would give 1 extra subject at leading and one extra at senior)

Marksman: sqn at ldg, wg at sen and reg/corps at master (higher levels count at all levels, eg passing wg before ldg would give 1 extra subject for both ldg and sen

Leadership
Leading - Weekend wing/sqn leadership/NCO course - min 12 hours training time
Sen/master - ACLC, CLC, JL, QAIC

Camp:
Ldg - attend RAF annual camp
Sen - attend as JNCO
Master - attend as SNCO/WO

Flying:
Sen/master: GS/FS

First Aid
Ldg - YFA (AFAIK it’s already corps policy that YFA should be taught at leading level)
Sen/master - AFA/FAAW/NPLQ/etc

  1. Rationale. The above would mean that the points would be addressed as follows:

a & b. Soft skills and “practical interests” would primarily be recognised by the use of the “additional” subjects (shooting, camps, flying, etc) and – in the case of soft skills – by the addition of leadership teaching. Wider RAF knowledge would be covered by the additional senior/master cadet subjects.

c. Addressed by changes to the first class syllabus

  1. Comparison to current training. This would not necessarily lead to the requirement to massively change training for everyone - for example, completing first class would remain much the same, and if a cadet did
    Principles of flight
    Airmanship Knowledge
    Intermediate radio comms (currently covered at first class, but a similar subject)
    Advanced ground nav
    Youth first aid
    and attended an annual camp, then they would pass leading - much the same as the current situation. However, the training syllabus to leading could be significantly diversified where possible and desirable.

  2. Compatibility with BTEC. Considering that the subjects should remain similar, I can’t see any issue with award of the BTEC for someone who completes 9 (or possibly 10 considering the splitting of radio comms) academic subjects. If a more practical path is followed, then this may not be compatible with the BTEC, although there is no reason why additional ‘top-up’ subjects could not be taken at master cadet level to fill the required quota if this turns out to be the case.

Thoughts?

2

I’ll get to the rest later, but regarding points 1a and 1c:

This came to my mind last night when, having spend the evening as a stand-in teacher for a First Class basic comms class (of about 11 cadets), I found myself alone at the squadron after everybody else had gone, separately dating, signing and naming 5 mandatory, 2 credit and 1 distinction sections in each of 11 first class logbooks before ticking them as complete in the tracking page. then I had about 3 worksheets that needed to be completed with a list of names, each name signed against and the sheet stored for audit.

BTEC AS is all very well but if the current system is what is absolutely required so as to provide an acceptable audit trail for whoever the hell it is issues our BTEC then we most definitely have got our priorities wrong as an organisation and need to get a grip.

The first class workbooks are a great idea and well presented, but the volume of admin that they create for the staff is out of all proportion!

3

[quote=“incubus” post=23494]I’ll get to the rest later, but regarding points 1a and 1c:

This came to my mind last night when, having spend the evening as a stand-in teacher for a First Class basic comms class (of about 11 cadets), I found myself alone at the squadron after everybody else had gone, separately dating, signing and naming 5 mandatory, 2 credit and 1 distinction sections in each of 11 first class logbooks before ticking them as complete in the tracking page. then I had about 3 worksheets that needed to be completed with a list of names, each name signed against and the sheet stored for audit.

BTEC AS is all very well but if the current system is what is absolutely required so as to provide an acceptable audit trail for whoever the hell it is issues our BTEC then we most definitely have got our priorities wrong as an organisation and need to get a grip.

The first class workbooks are a great idea and well presented, but the volume of admin that they create for the staff is out of all proportion![/quote]

Agreed 100%, and the fact that they require and refer to a wide variety of extra sources doesn’t help either.

Removing the signing boxes for each task and having them only for each learning outcome would help a lot, as would including the worksheets - most of which only consist of a few lines of text anyway.

And why do discussions need to be signed twice, when written work is signed once? It would be just as easy for the staff to “cheat” cadets on written work as it would group discussion.

4

That all sounds very sensible. I think the biggest problem would be the lack of good leaders to design and teach the leadership units!

5

I think it should be as practical as possible the last thing the little ones want to do is sit in a class room after they have just spent the previous 6 hours doing so.

The current syllabus is boring, outdated and normally is dragged out as long as possible by cadets. It should be bought into line with the adaption of current technology I.e media, portals for them to do training at home which count towards getting the classification.

6

The problems as I see it are many fold in no particular order :

  • Staff not adequately trained or not so much trained as feeling confident to instruct things

  • ‘Training’ opportunities for staff too few and too far between, we have to remember if staff aren’t ‘trained’ nothing happens. Too often forgotten IMO.

  • An overly convoluted system heavily dependent on IT which due to how sqns have bought and continue to buy their kit will never be standardised and how much time and money the providers are prepared to put in.

  • Things poorly implemented from on high. It’s all well and good coming out with policies but there just seems to be a scatter gun approach and an almost constant round of chops and changes, that you invariably find out about piecemeal. This is OK at work, as we are there “8 hours a day - 5 days a week” and you get paid to put up with management’s whims/fancies/foibles. But we do this 2 nights a week and numerous weekends on top of our real jobs, so chopping and changing almost as it seems when there is a change in the direction of the wind, is a nonsense. This is probably why the grandiose notions never really materialise as who we are and what we do is never considered as a factor. We were told that all staff had to have a 1st aid ticket, chatting to mate last night he said they’ve changed it again so that now you have to have a 1st aid ticket or you can’t re-sign, but you can probably resign. This is BS, I don’t know of anywhere in the real world where a 1st aid qualification is mandatory as it would be prohibitively expensive. Probably like so much in the Corps if they can get it done on the cheap by pushing the burden out to Wings and Squadrons.

The biggest problem with our classification system is that it has changed more in the last 5/6 years than at anytime in my time in the Corps prior to that and it’s been nigh on impossible to keep up. Ironically prior to all the changes other than a requirement for HQAC keeping things updated (never happened) it was by and large fine, it was relatively simple to use (ideal for a volunteer organisation), everyone understood it and cadets progressed. We have had IMO too many fingers from too many people being stuck in trying to fix something that wasn’t essentially broken, to make a name for themselves (or its how it seems) and leaving us to pick up the mess. It mirrors what you sort of pick up on, from the news and speaking to teachers, in formal education.

The 1st Class logbook is a point in case of too many fingers, poor implementation and clueless management about what it actually entails. I’d bet many teachers would baulk at the admin involved.

Some of the suggestions would potentially require more courses for staff and if I’m honest I don’t feel Corps is delivering as it is, so to suggest more is folly.

When cadets already cite homework as a reason for not attending, plus I know how bloody hard it was when my kids fitted their extra-curricular activities around school homework, we would be making a rod for our own backs if we were to suggest cadets do homework for cadet training or run of the mill things. If what I saw with my own kids rings true today, they’d get in from school and invariably do 1-2 hours before eating, then go out to do whatever or do more and this increased from the 4th Year. What we do as classification trainng should be restricted to a parade nights, unless it is something specific which is explained from the outset. The only exception is a bit of personal revision when it comes to the actual exam, but then we should be factoring revision into the training programme.

The one area that needs a real good look at are the major overlaps between Basic and Leading Cadet with respect to Airmanship/P of F and “land navigation”. WRT the latter, for years I have been doing more in terms of content at the Basic Cadet level, so that they are able to do expeditions. The Basic Cadet now has more PofF which in some respects is good, but in others takes away from the Leading syllabus. As I said people tinkering without any real understanding.

7

I’d agree that the old system worked better than the current one - I’d argue that it still wasn’t appropriate.

8

I think in some quarters there is too much made of making the ATC ‘fun’. When I was a cadet apart from nights on the range, we pretty much did the same thing every night and I can’t ever feeling bored and my dad said I never came home saying it was boring. I don’t ever remember having loads to do at the weekend as seems to the mantra today, unless you were into sport. But it didn’t bother us as we all had lives outside the ATC. Unless it was an activity arranged by us or the squadron, we didn’t socialise with each other in the way I see many cadets doing today.
Maybe there is a point that we try too hard to make it fun and interesting and have to keep reinventing things as to not do so will see cadets leave.

I don’t really get why you feel the training as it is, is inappropriate? As I said we have had too many fingers involved and it has become disjointed, as those making the changes haven’t looked at what they have been looking to change or change and how it affects the next level. Just like school there are things I’ve learnt in the ATC that I have never used, but that doesn’t make me feel it’s inappropriate. Inappropriate in which way?
I don’t personally understand the notion / addition of RAF Regiment, RAF Fire service, Logs, Medical, RAFP and Advanced leadership theory. Unless for the first 5 you have people fully up to speed in those, it will be a case of people following a book or in the modern era a PowerPoint and getting 900 variations on a theme. As for the leadership, will it ever get put into real world situations or will it like all leadership training a preparation for bizarre scenarios to justify the training? I find that leadership requires a basic understanding of getting the job done and ‘project/event’ management, nearly everything we bang on about in leadership is a superfluous distraction. Every social night my cadets have done in the last 8/9 years has been arranged by the NCOs, they are told to research; venues, time, date organise transport and do a costing before putting it forward. If they come to me with the costings the Civ Comm normally stump a fiver a head. The NCOs and more senior cadets organise the cadet’s involvement for our awards evening, they are given the details and off they go and liaise with the RBL and RAFA to do collecting or other fundraising. This still requires all the bits that go with doing leadership tasks, BUT they are doing it for real and see and or are part of the outcome and not fanning around with planks and rope doing some nonsensical scenario. They still do the usual NCO things on parade nights. I feel they have better ‘leadership and management’ skills than many I have come across.

The shooting suggestions are fine, just where are the weapons and the staff to do this? Given that shooting has gone from being relatively straightforward to possibly the most overly complicated for the sake of being overly complicated activity we do, it has almost become myth that we do shooting. Compared to 20 years ago when we had all but two squadrons shoot actively in the Wing, we now have probably 5/6. We have Wing shoots and a lot was made of the number of cadets, but what wasn’t mentioned is that ¾ were the same cadets going to different weekends.

For the camps and courses we need more places, like 4/5+ times the current allocations.

Flying if we ever get back to where we were before all the problems with the Tutor and currently gliders.

The only thing really viable is 1st Aid and that’s only because of a Corps diktat, but only to AFA, unless someone revises the policy again.

9

[quote=“glass half empty 2” post=23513]I think in some quarters there is too much made of making the ATC ‘fun’. When I was a cadet apart from nights on the range, we pretty much did the same thing every night and I can’t ever feeling bored and my dad said I never came home saying it was boring. I don’t ever remember having loads to do at the weekend as seems to the mantra today, unless you were into sport. But it didn’t bother us as we all had lives outside the ATC. Unless it was an activity arranged by us or the squadron, we didn’t socialise with each other in the way I see many cadets doing today.
Maybe there is a point that we try too hard to make it fun and interesting and have to keep reinventing things as to not do so will see cadets leave.

I don’t really get why you feel the training as it is, is inappropriate? As I said we have had too many fingers involved and it has become disjointed, as those making the changes haven’t looked at what they have been looking to change or change and how it affects the next level. Just like school there are things I’ve learnt in the ATC that I have never used, but that doesn’t make me feel it’s inappropriate. Inappropriate in which way?[/quote]
Read para 1a and 1b of my original post.

So exactly the same as with the entire current classification syllabus then?

[quote=“glass half empty 2” post=23513]The shooting suggestions are fine, just where are the weapons and the staff to do this? Given that shooting has gone from being relatively straightforward to possibly the most overly complicated for the sake of being overly complicated activity we do, it has almost become myth that we do shooting. Compared to 20 years ago when we had all but two squadrons shoot actively in the Wing, we now have probably 5/6. We have Wing shoots and a lot was made of the number of cadets, but what wasn’t mentioned is that ¾ were the same cadets going to different weekends.

For the camps and courses we need more places, like 4/5+ times the current allocations.

Flying if we ever get back to where we were before all the problems with the Tutor and currently gliders.

The only thing really viable is 1st Aid and that’s only because of a Corps diktat, but only to AFA, unless someone revises the policy again.[/quote]All of that’s covered in Para 4. You don’t HAVE to do it, there’s enough scope that units can offer the things that they can offer. Cadets on my unit have shoot multiple weapons types, attended camps and are going on an FT exercise soon.

Clearly gliding/flying availability is out of our hands, but it’s always going to part of the ATC.

10

So exactly the same as with the entire current classification syllabus then?[/quote]
Probably, however you don’t see people getting overly excited about someone instructing propulsion, PofF, various nav subject matter et al and not getting it quite right. Just by the few on here if it can be extrapolated to the whole staff population, then get any of the service style subject being insructed not quite right and there’ll be ructions.

I personally feel that leadership theory contains so much tosh and so much that we push is to achieve formulaic solutions to 20 minute playground tasks that are about as far as they can possibly be from anything you might do in real life. When in real life do you have a timekeeper, standards / safety or in 99% of instances a 2 i/c? In the projects (or we’d call it leadership task) I’ve been involved in, in my life it’s more about researching, planning and preparation and can take weeks, months or years before you get to actually doing it. In that respect is leadership theory and subsequent practice in the Corps really appropriate? I also think that our leadership tasks in needing a group, don’t reflect reality. I say to cadets ensuring you are ready for school or coming to the squadron or going out with mates is a “leadership task” and in life you need to plan/prep to complete many day to day activities and not necessarily have others around to help. This what we should be covering in ‘leadership’ and not all the other guff. You soon learn that in a project you have to give other people things to do or doing things as you can’t do it all.

11

So exactly the same as with the entire current classification syllabus then?[/quote]
Probably, however you don’t see people getting overly excited about someone instructing propulsion, PofF, various nav subject matter et al and not getting it quite right. Just by the few on here if it can be extrapolated to the whole staff population, then get any of the service style subject being insructed not quite right and there’ll be ructions.

I personally feel that leadership theory contains so much tosh and so much that we push is to achieve formulaic solutions to 20 minute playground tasks that are about as far as they can possibly be from anything you might do in real life. When in real life do you have a timekeeper, standards / safety or in 99% of instances a 2 i/c? In the projects (or we’d call it leadership task) I’ve been involved in, in my life it’s more about researching, planning and preparation and can take weeks, months or years before you get to actually doing it. In that respect is leadership theory and subsequent practice in the Corps really appropriate? I also think that our leadership tasks in needing a group, don’t reflect reality. I say to cadets ensuring you are ready for school or coming to the squadron or going out with mates is a “leadership task” and in life you need to plan/prep to complete many day to day activities and not necessarily have others around to help. This what we should be covering in ‘leadership’ and not all the other guff. You soon learn that in a project you have to give other people things to do or doing things as you can’t do it all, but the people will be given things to do they understand and have an interest, unlike what we do in our playground tasks.

12

So exactly the same as with the entire current classification syllabus then?[/quote]
Probably, however you don’t see people getting overly excited about someone instructing propulsion, PofF, various nav subject matter et al and not getting it quite right. Just by the few on here if it can be extrapolated to the whole staff population, then get any of the service style subject being insructed not quite right and there’ll be ructions.

I personally feel that leadership theory contains so much tosh and so much that we push is to achieve formulaic solutions to 20 minute playground tasks that are about as far as they can possibly be from anything you might do in real life. When in real life do you have a timekeeper, standards / safety or in 99% of instances a 2 i/c? In the projects (or we’d call it leadership task) I’ve been involved in, in my life it’s more about researching, planning and preparation and can take weeks, months or years before you get to actually doing it. In that respect is leadership theory and subsequent practice in the Corps really appropriate? I also think that our leadership tasks in needing a group, don’t reflect reality. I say to cadets ensuring you are ready for school or coming to the squadron or going out with mates is a “leadership task” and in life you need to plan/prep to complete many day to day activities and not necessarily have others around to help. This what we should be covering in ‘leadership’ and not all the other guff. You soon learn that in a project you have to give other people things to do or doing things as you can’t do it all.[/quote]

That’s basically the point. Clearly in most ‘real-life’ situations you won’t need to appoint a timekeeper to shout out at two minute intervals, but the principle of selecting a team member for a role, delegating that role and ensuring that it is carried out correctly is the principle that’s learnt.

Clearly command tasks are a simulation of an imaginary task that doesn’t necessarily reflect real life; however to say that they’re pointless because cadets won’t encounter rivers of shark infested custard in their day-to-day life is a bit like saying that the Army shooting on the range is pointless, as the enemy will never be standing in neat rows at 100m intervals. The basic principles - teamwork, leadership, communication, confidence, the ability to get ideas across in a competitive environment, checking that subordinates are carrying out their tasks effectively, etc are all taught effectively in a command task environment.