Originally Posted by
Yozzer
We recruit 20 people to a specific trade to fill vacancies of ...ergh ...20! But one gets chopped, one is on long term sick through injury sustained in training and one bangs out because he misses his mum. Assuming there are no other problems, we get 17 through to advanced training. We do not and never have done recruit the extra three for attritition, either in projected planning or making up a deficit within the same finacial year.
I guess it depends on how you look at it.
If one school has an input of 18 per month and the next school can accept only 14, how do you account for the 4 spare bods?
You cite 3 cases for attrition but it is a fact that a number will also washout during training. I later kept the stats at the one Nav school and the percentage dropping out for medical or personal reasons was a near constant 3-4%. The numbers being recoursed was also a near constant 40%. The numbers getting chopped was again pretty static at 20%.
Numbers in-to-training are always greater than the numbers required on the front line. This is a very delicate balance and better success in training resulted in more getting through to wait operational conversion. A change in the training syllabus, when we switched from training V-bomber Navs, resulted in fewer being recoursed early on but I think the overall failure rate remained near 20%. Oddly that was exactly the same as 50 years ago when we had 2 Nav Schools.