I work a “sort of shift” system of 6 days away from home, 4 - 5 days back. So, similar limitations for me & I ams sure, similar for others.
Yes, there are other cses, but I had to use up valuable leave/holiday time to get both the SR & LR RCO qualifications (even just for the weekends), this penalised me for subsequent leave availability in each year - in our company, we have a complicated system where more than a minimum number of leave days taken attracts wraparound “freebie” days (so good to use more days = a couple added on, but short duration = penalises available total days), & also we cannot take subsequent leave within a minimum timescale of the first. Add on a mandatory limitation for maximum of 10 days (+ associated freebie days) in “high” season (Mar - Oct) & I am really stymied as to what i can look at.
What you also have is the essential requirement for people other than RCOs to become SAAIs - otherwise all the weekend shooting/trg requirements fall on the same people.
[quote=“papa november” post=25560]Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
I’m a schitzophrenic,
And so am I.
I’m getting tired of repeated issuing of policies or amended drills, and this being reversed or changed again a short whole later.[/quote]
Like wearing of eye protection for those butt markers on gallery ranges, which I predict will be withdrawn when the availability and cost of Sawfly ballistic goggles or similar is addressed. ie: ACF not scaled, and can’t afford them.
They have also tried to make cadets wear CBA/Osprey on barrack ranges. Until they looked at the availability and the cost.
[quote=“bucketofinstantsunshine” post=25559]
I did the full course at Frimley and minor mistakes could fail you. The lessons really had to be near perfect and almost DS quality. The length of the course and the hours put in and the excellent support of the DS allow you to reach that standard. Even so there is 12% failure rate, but often due to failing WHT on induction, or just a lack of subject knowledge or prep beforehand. People who do it a second time rarely if ever fail I am told.[/quote]
I would say that 12% failure (or 88% pass rate) is quite good! On my SAAI course (with the CTT), the failure rate was closer to 50%. As examples, we had one student who couldn’t lock working parts to the rear and another who couldn’t remember the four marksmanship principles, when his teaching practice lesson was on that very topic. Not sure if this is typical?
Perhaps the Frimley pass rate is comparatively higher because it tends to be ACF and CCF(Army) who go on the courses, and they have better weapon handling skills as they use the rifle a lot more frequently.
Regretfully, i doubt if this could be resurrected - unless a “business case” could be made to justify it - & of course, looking at the justification for retaining the WI qualification, the qcwht course structure/paperwork trail would need to match the WI requirements.[/quote]
Someone with Qcwht is purely and simply an assessor. The instructor does the instruction and then pass their student to someone to assess. This is remarkably easy to monitor by every so often a WI observes the assessor assessing. The Qcwht in my experience worked and worked well, probably why it was canned. I had a member of staff who had it (3 others locall) and we did a lot of shooting as it was relatively easy to keep cadets current. Since it was binned we’ve effectively lost shooting as keeping cadets current has become a massive task as the one WI we have locally doesn’t have the time to in do WHTs for all the cadets, he even stuggles to keep his own cadets current. At most they can do 3 an hour but more often this is only 2. The maths is easy one person c.170 cadets to train and or test, even as a full time job you would struggle, given the 6 month life of a wht.
The irony is we have MOI and we have rank amateurs assessing it and offering critique via a tick list and we have a whole instruction system designed around it and no one qualified to observe them assessing.
it does seem odd to cancel all courses due to a “poor training” ethos and create a new Frimley sponsored/approved solution in reaction, a little while later set up a dissolving authority of WI buy setting a cut off deadline only to now say both qualifications are valid!
i recall many people saying we (Cadet Forces) were >< close to losing shooting altogether because of the state of training seen.
having qualified as a SAAI i can understand why those on high thought that having seen some awful lessons…
i’d like to hope the 5 yearly renewal of the F7257 would give WIs chance to prove themselves by delivering a lesson would weed out those who no longer reach the standard…but with a shortage nationwide of WIs and SAAI who from a local SATT is going to say no?
The way to assess how good or bad the training is, is how many accidents due to poor training have happened (let’s stick to the ATC) in 77 years?
In the 13 years I was an RCO I never had one accident and I was on a range at least once a month and neither did the other RCOs on the sqn and unless they were fibbing neither did anyone else. We taught, tested and ran ranges on our .22 ticket. We probably didn’t all teach it the same way, but would have been more or less and this is the same I’ll wager for any other thing we do across the Corps. The cadets made holes in paper and many achieved marksman awards, many more than have done in the last 10 years.
The reason that many I know in the shooting fraternity feel the approach we have got now has nothing to do with safety or poor training / teaching, but because The Army took over shooting in the MoD and the view is didn’t and don’t understand the cadet world. We have a system in the way of different courses and constant requals which is probably workable when it’s a day job and like in any job you can get the time to do what is required, this is less so when applied to people doing 2 nights a week and weekends fitting everything around work and family life. I’ve got an RCO and have lost them for some parade nights and weekend activities as they are here, there and everywhere assistinng with running ranges, due to the lack of available staff. I let them have the weekends they are not on a range at some point, as they have to have a life that isn’t just about the ATC.
What that SASC TAG document says is that the WI course was supposedly a good course.
The reality is that it must have been very poorly implemented in many cases, turning out some seriously poor WIs.
I can recall the quality of my own WI course. If it were not for subsequently receiving further training from a colleague in the CTT I would certainly not be the standard of instructor that I am now.
I also recall at least two L98 courses that we organized where WIs ‘senior’ to both of us (in some cases these people were also members of the SATT) simply trained the cadets wrong.
Two different courses, where the quality of instruction from SATT staff and long serving WIs meant that we had to fail (and then hurriedly retrain) 50% of the cadets speaks volumes to me!
I’m genuinely amazed at the U-turn.
I’d never heard of a ‘one day’ WI course, but I wonder if it’s exclusion as a suitable course would also bar those WIs who, being judged unsuitable to progress onto the L98, were awarded a ‘No8 only’ WI annotation? And if so, is that ban active now?
I did as did many the old one weekend for N°8 and given it was only one weekend you spent a lot of time doing range work, but you taught cadets and passed them OK to shoot once in their cadet life. Given that the vast majority did it this way I do not recall seeing cadets acting dangerously or inappropriately on ranges, which IMO are the only indicators of poor WIs giving poor training. I have to say when I have observed ranges over the past few years I still don’t see the cadets acting badly or doing things they shouldn’t and I don’t see anything to indicate that so called ‘better trained’ staff and continual handling tests makes the slightest difference.
I’ll wager that some of those saying how bad it was are ex-cadets who achieved marksman but recieved this ‘poor training’.
The shooting training etc was another of those things that wasn’t broken and didn’t need fixing, where the fixing has done nothing to enhance or increase the activity.
i find it interesting" that on paper" parents, the public, the Daily Mail would find shooting the most “dangerous” activity we offer (the Daily Mail would add reckless to be training a semi auto rifle as well!) yet in my experience is one of the safety activities conducted outside of the classroom/Squadron building.
at the end of each DofE season we hear of someone else who has fallen over their own feet/needed rescuing off a mountain side, burnt their eyebrows lighting their stoves, suffered the effect of the exposure…got lost requiring a search party to be sent out
Unfortunately in recent years we have also seen some fatalities in flying activities.
Sports nearly always ends up with some first aid treatment, if only for for a sprained ankle or treatment of asthma
fieldcraft is no more without risk, particularly when in low light conditions trips and falls common enough
Even Road Marching sees blisters
yet when was the last time you heard of a serious issue on the range?
there have been a handful of near misses perhaps, but as an organisation a Cadet is safer on the range than nearly any other activity or opportunity we offer yet HQAC and the MOD/Frimley request we jump through hoops, and over hurdles with new policy and/or procedures to maintain a “safe system of training”
the old adage “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” comes to mind.
a real frustration for me with regard to shooting quals and the near misses seen is there appears to be a lack of common sense reaction.
someone, somewhere Messed up so EVERYONE has to pay the price but adding a new process.
in my 9-5 job, if i mess up i pay the price. i get a swift telling off, told to put it right. if appropriate the rest of the team told about the error as a learning point and we carry on.
if i were to mess up completely i would be banned from that activity, removed from the authority to enter a room, use lab equipment etc. or even given the sack…
the same approach isn’t seen in the ACO in my experience. if someone messes up they are told to be more careful and are allowed to carry on like nothing happened!
if a WI isn’t training at the right standard/RCO conducts a range incorrectly, take away their ticket and tell them to retrain don’t create a nationwide rethink effecting everyone for one persons error
Cadet fails WHT because instructor trained them wrong = bad training.
Cadet can pass WHT but doesn’t understand how to shoot properly = bad training.
Cadet spends day on range doing nothing more than converting brass = bad training.
Just because something might not give rise to dangerous practices does not equate to “not being broken”.