Originally Posted by
tartare
Innocent questions - has the imposition of said quotas actually seen a decline in suitable candidates for RAF positions?
Do we know if the overall level of competency, suitability, merit has actually fallen while this policy has been in place?
Is the RAF now desperately short of suitable candidates for all types of roles?
I deplore woke-ism and political correctness as much as any of you.
But to use a crude analogy - surely as long as your wing-person is watching your six like a hawk - who gives a sh1te what they look like when they take their helmet and mask off?
There are not strictly any 'quotas' in force, but 'targets' - subtly different. The process revealed to have been in use is that candidates were treated as being of equal merit if they reached the minimum threshold standard for acceptance in the assessment process. Candidates above that threshold were preferentially loaded onto training courses - or 'selected', since there is only a set number of training places each year - if they were ethnic minority or female, with no regard for performance above the minimum threshold. It does not take the analytical skills of a genius to realise that such an approach reduces the average assessment performance of people accepted into service, when compared to the alternative (ahem, legally mandated) approach of selecting the candidates with the highest assessments. There's no argument here - it's a simple statistical fact.
The official line that "standards were not lowered" can only possibly be true in so far as the minimum threshold was not lowered. And I don't know that for sure; unless any more leaked correspondence emerges to the contrary, I have to take it on trust that CAS has not plumbed the depths of uttering outright lies. If it does emerge that the minimum threshold was lowered then that will be a very serious matter indeed.
Some will argue that performance in the selection process does not read across perfectly to competency and suitability for candidates' eventual professional employment. That's undoubtedly true, but it is also beyond argument that it bears some relation. Otherwise why measure any of the attributes involved?
I'm led to believe that the RAF is short of recruits in some roles, so the above process will not have made any difference to selection in those fields. Unsurprisingly, however, it has never been short of recruits to the flying branch, so some of those who in future will be responsible for "watching your six like a hawk" and were recruited during the period in question could well be so-called "diversity hires". The question now will be whether the training system has the integrity to apply the requisite standards to them. Of course, every individual who's reached the acceptance standard should be capable of passing within the allotted flying hours, and go on to perform to the required standard at the front line, but you would expect the overall proportion doing so to move in line with the standard of input. (I know there are certain incentives around course graduation in the MFTS contract, but am no expert so will limit myself to saying I hope they can't be met by compromising on student performance!)
None of the correspondence leaked thus far has indicated how the white males who did succeed were selected. If they received the same "equal merit" treatment as the minorities and females, then presumably they were allocated training places in the order they applied, or the order they attended OASC, or alphabetical order, or some other system like that. If, on the other hand, they were selected based on their merit scores - with the highest scores being offered places - then stand by for the law of unintended consequences to take hold, as white males perform better *on average* through training and in their early careers, with consequences for numbers succeeding at promotion boards... you saw it predicted here first.