Ffyll said:
That's a bit pessimistic. Reg Officer Cadets get even less army contact before beginning training (admittedly they get a much thorough programme!) so I'm not sure you can suggest that 'crap' that walks through the door is any crapper than anyone else at TAB or TAMB.
Would you consider comparing the reg route in for an officer? Why don't you also insist that reg officers do a year as a private before going forward?
Sorry if it is pessimistic, but remember Reg OCdts get a year at the factory, TA ones get 3 weeks!
They are on an accelerated and condensed timetable as it is without the added problem of being totally inexperienced.
This seems vaguely familiar to the posts made a few years back when the scheme started; I'd rather hoped that these arguments had been countered and we'd moved on since then.
I strongly suggest you take the time and bother to talk to those JO's who have come through the DETAPO system and tell them they are wasting their time as they're not good enough - see what kind of response you get.
Who said they were not good enough????
They are the few who have made it through the system, and therefore by Darwinian rules are ‘good enough’. My points are that there are so few of them to make it a worthwhile venture and it causes many who would make good officers with just a little more experience fail. And 90% of the failures then leave the TA.
If the DETAPO scheme was extended, including time at a unit then the pass rate would increase.
And thanks for the suggestion, I had never thought of doing that. Could you also suggest how I could suck an egg???
As I said in my first post, I’m on the inside watching this happen, not the outside moaning.
A lot of the crap that does come in come does so with inflated visions of their own self worth, and truly believe that they are Von Clausewitz reincarnated. They take up so much time and resources that if they all had to go through a unit and soldier training first they would never be passed on for Officer Training, or would have had enough experience by then to do better than a 2.2 at TAB!
The DETAPO was a badly thought out knee jerk reaction to a shortage of TA Officers, and in my humble opinion has done absolutely fek all in alleviating it. The fact that units are sending through more PO’s is the factor that is raising the amount of TA Officers and in my view the only way of doing it as it does not throw too much, to fast, too hard at the OCdts.
If you want hard and fast data why not do a FOI request for TA Officer passout figures from say 2006 to present, detailing if TAPO or DETAPO.
Sandhurst has the figures, I saw them on my last visit there a few months ago, they know it doesn’t work, the CO’s of the RTC’s know it doesn’t work, and have been quietly pushing to bin the scheme.