as we see so often that nurses who are CFAVs are not permitted to teach/instruct Heartstart, or are not counted as “first aider” as they don’t have the piece of paper to prove it…yet their experience, and qualifications far exceed what is required
I have a Royal Marine Commando who is not allowed to teach Field Craft as he has not earned the right to do so.
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That’s not up to us - that’s the provider. No matter what qualifications are held, to instruct Heartstart you must do the instructors’ course.
As a Nurse, this has baffled me in recent weeks.
I am more than capable of first aid, but in the eyes of the RAF AC, I can’t instruct a cadet to put a plaster on a papercut! 
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everyday is a school day
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Placing you in conravention of the NMC Code of Conduct, in that you can be reported by people if they know you are nurse and have not acted in accordence with the CoC. I contend that ACO rules do not apply in this case.
With all of these topics - FT, 1st Aid, etc - the biggest issue with overqualified INSTRUCTORS who haven’t done our relevant qualifications is that their training and experience is beyond and different to what we teach cadets.
A large degree of it is familiarisation and reprogramming.
A Marine, or a Nurse, isn’t going to have learnt from our book, so if you tell them to go and teach something they could default to what they know instead of what we teach.
That’s not to say that perhaps a fam course in lieu of a full course wouldn’t be more appropriate, but we’re not always the ones setting the rules.
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I wouldn’t look it as “earning the right”. He merely needs to demonstrate that he’s capable of teaching to our syllabus.
I had an ex Royal Marine too who thought he could beast the cadets around the training area in the same way that he’d been beasted during training. He required repeated “re-education”.
Being ex service may give him the subject matter knowledge, but it doesn’t automatically make him ready to teach it, and particularly when it’s to cadets.
However if he’s the right type of guy then it shouldn’t be difficult to get him cleared to teach (except for the current issue around fieldcraft qualifications).
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although i get what your saying i have received no formal training on how to deliver our material
unless you count
1 - being a SAAI and therefore recognised as a “MOI” course
2 - having learnt the subjects (as was) back when i was a Cadet.
I am an engineer by degree and trade and a pilot - I am ideally knowledged to teach some of our classification subjects but on the basis i haven’t been taught it is pointless asking me to teach…
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We were talking FT and 1st Aid, not classifications…
If you think about it, you can teach them almost anything around the classification topics as long as they can meet the exam requirements.
But you can’t teach too far outside of the set 1st Aid syllabus and let cadets loose with knowledge that they don’t know how to properly and safely implement. A trained healthcare professional will react differently in some situations to how we have to train people to react.
The thing is with first aid…there really isnt any difference in the first aid I do in my job and what St John teach in their syllabus. It is all from the same book. CPR etc is all the same whether it is taught by St John or in an NHS setting, they’re national guidelines, not local policies that vary.
And if that were the case, surely then we should still have to do the RAF AC quals if they’re that anal about it?
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have we deviated enough from the topic to warrant a split? 
i appreciate that - but there is little difference really
we are adults teaching kids some skills or knowledge which may or may not be useful to them in life.
if we’re experience and competent at a skill or activity we still need a “qualification” to be able to teach X, Y and Z because that what the book says, yet for subjects A, B and C there is no mention of being experienced, or having any competency let alone a “qualification”
I’d say so.
I get that - as said, we don’t always set the rules ourselves. Equally, there has to be a mechanism for ensuring consistency in training.
For classifications, that’s the exams. There isn’t really a test or exam for other things such as FT. 1st Aid is a little more tricky as sometimes an application gets you in through the back door despite not meeting the written instruction on paper. Equally, I’ve known highly qualified medical professionals willingly do a FA course as it is so different to their daily skillset.
It does make it a nonsense that “we” look to harvest former forces personnel and other professionals as instructors, only to say no mate, unless you go on a course and listen to a bloke or woman whose only experience is doing cadet things. None of this made clear in the adult recruitment literature.
It is then ironic that we have management dumped on us, who know the square root of sweet fanny adams about the Air Cadets and create havoc. So by the same token that an ex RA SAAI we had join (and leave PDQ) couldn’t teach cadets weapons unless he went on an Air Cadet run weapons instructor course, should not our senior management spend 12-18 months at the sharp end of the Air Cadets (ie on a squadron perhaps as the TO or adj) before assuming command roles? Let them navigate the cess pool of SharePoint, the futility of SMS permissions to do things and the mind numbing and senseless make it up as we go along paperwork real or electronic required to do things.
What makes them qualified to “lead” us, anymore than any one of us leading the Air Cadets? They may have had a fleeting experience with Air Cadets during annual camps, but could we go to the RAF and say we want to run a stations for example, just because we’ve spent a few weeks on them. I think that wouldn’t go down too well.
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That’s a middle-management issue, not an HQAC one - no such rule exists.
Might not now, but this is what he was told was der rules at the time, the OC at the time was in complete disbelief.
The bigger nonsense … if he’d done the course the SATT OC wanted him on the SATT. But he’d done a smart turn. Wasn’t sure he wanted anything to do with rank amateurs, I think that’s what he said.
it doesn’t get away from the fact that the Air Cadets looks to recruit from ex-service personnel and other “professionals” qualified to do things, only to require them to fulfil something less than their professional qualification. Yet my other point stands, might not be liked due to its side on approach, but there you go.
That is, in part, because we don’t teach to the same level.
I know an ex service guy who’d love to come and teach bayonet drills and hand-to-hand combat with fighting knives… But we don’t do that.
We don’t just let anyone who ever served teach anything they fancy. People need to learn our syllabus and limitations and then they know what they can and can’t teach, and indeed not everyone who is an ex soldier/sailor/marine/airman is suitable to instruct. Not everyone is a natural trainer… You’ve only got to look at some of the people we’ve got already to see that.
Certainly we like to have people with service experience because they will (or should) have a good knowledge of their subject - but they need to discover that we are a different organization with a different purpose.
If someone has an issue with that and chooses to walk away - fine. Generally it says more about them than it does about the organisation.
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We used to do NBC drills with suits with a few blokes from the local TA, when I was a cadet. Wasn’t on the syllabus then or now I doubt.
I’ve got a few people who have expressed an interest in speaking on and demonstrating things to the cadets, that are not on our syllabus, but if it’s going to make it a bit more interesting can’t be a bad thing.
How many people are “natural trainers”? Sod the Air Cadets we are just an after school activity relying on people willing to volunteer. I’ve been on courses costing many 100s of pounds through work and the people are not really trainers, but they are engaging (some easy on the eye), have some subject knowledge and get the information across, which is all you need. We get people off the street who know nothing and they manage it, so all this “trainer” stuff is just some of the rubbish “we” peddle and try and kid ourselves we are masters of and some sneer at people who don’t fit whatever their stylised/idealised perception of this “ideal” is.
The fact people walk away says it all about an organisation that has got too far up its own exhaust pipe, that it is unaccommodating and makes people feel unwanted. Way to go in a volunteer organisation, struggling to get staff.
Very few, that’s why we teach MOI.
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