Thread dredge… inspired by a comment by by @Turbo in RAFAC death thread…
Has it really been 10 years since we let 12 year olds in the door? Has it helped or hindered squadrons? Has it extended retention, or is service length still hovering around 2 years?
Completely anecdotal, but my general feeling is they tend to leave pretty quickly.
Maybe it’s something we’re doing wrong, but the younger 12 year olds really don’t seem to cope well and get fed up before they turn 13.5.
We get more friend groups join, generally you can’t tell who the 12 year olds are on the Sqn.
Haven’t really done any record keeping to work out whether they stay longer or not. My current crop of most senior cadets all joined at 12,
Christ…
We’re doing reasonably well at keeping ours but it is hard work.
We’ve also been quite lucky in that our last few intakes have had a mix of age ranges. Having 14 or even 15 year olds helps the group move faster and they pull the youngsters along with them.
I don’t think that they seem to stay as long and to my mind are much harder work to get up to speed with their self suffciency and drive. After a decade, I’m still not convinced that dropping the age to 12 was a good idea bearing in mind some of what we do.
From my perspective we are retaining most for at least 4 years. Average attendance starts to drop after that (exams). We have also started to lower our expectations of our NCOs. That just not as mature at 16 as we are used to.
This is a huge impact but I don’t think it’s anything to do with them joining at 12.
The cadets (kids in general not just cadets) need a lot more support at the moment, appear to have a lot less initiative, and struggle with their emotions a lot more.
I struggle with my emotions much more. Mostly rage at their lack of initiative and general ineptitude. I know it is partly my failing as a leader/youth worker but that just compounds the frustration.
I think COVID has a lot to blame for this. 2 years locked up at home has a lot to answer for. Decreased confidence, initiative and desire to get away from screens
The screen time is a massive factor on some of the drop off in cadet NCOs performance. Many just dont know how to interact effectively and so dont know how to influence others on the unit and get frustrated when something doesnt go to plan.
Initiative is also something that I see is lacking, with many cadet NCOs not switched on enough to do the basics well without a member of CFAV reminding them!
i joined in Y8 and some of my friends joined as well currently I’m a CPL with a good amount of qualifications under my belt and I’m trying to get my friends back into it properly I think it can massively depend on activities and interests!