How many students in total, have been chopped from the T2 since the new management took over a few years ago?
Someone will be along to tell you that the decrease in chop rate is because the RAF can afford to be pickier about its candidates at selection given the gradual decrease in annual requirement and the increase in population, and because standards of instruction have improved (the same argument trotted out when GCSE and A-Level results were on their relentless rises a few years back, before some rigour was reintroduced). Well, the recent glut of pilot recruitment should tell us whether that’s true in a few years’ time. Personally I don’t find it credible that OASC, EFT and BFJT have simultaneously improved outcomes so noticeably. What I do find credible are tales of an incentive structure that encourages the contractor to chuck additional Hawk hours at students that would have been chopped in days gone by, especially when those tales come from Valley’s prime ‘customer’.