For several years CASA has pushed flying schools to teach a concept called Competency based standards. From what I see there is no difference between this concept (apart from a million more pages of utterly useless paperwork) and how I was taught to fly over 65 years ago on Tiger Moths and later in the RAAF.
I have tried hard to be dispassionate about all this extra terminology and general record keeping bumpf called Competency Based Training but I am buggered if I can see how this all makes better pilots or better instructors.
When I learned to fly at Bankstown in 1951 I was blessed with very experienced ex wartime flying instructors. The pre-flight briefings and post flight briefings were good enough for me and at the end of each flight my instructors would write appropriate comments in a document called Student Progress Sheets. Later in the RAAF they were known as Hate Sheets - all in wry humour of course. Their purpose was to ensure the next instructor was aware of what sequences had already been covered successfully.
The flying training in aero clubs was generally good and Examiners of Airmen would do the PPL and CPL tests. The subsequent RAAF training I received was first class and the purpose of the Hate Sheets never changed. That is they recorded student progress.
Allowing for the difference in types of training aircraft then and now, instructor technique was similar except for the propensity now of the use of inexperienced flying instructors barely out of flying school themselves. Steep turns, aerobatics, practice forced landings, in other words basic aircraft handling techniques, have hardly changed over the past 60 years.
Do today's Competency Based steep turns fly any differently to my steep turns in a Tiger Moth or a Wirraway of yesteryear? I don't think so. In fact the instructor patter used today is based on what was used all those years ago. Briefings have changed though, in that time, and not for the better either. In those days, briefings were concise. Today I see a plethora of weasel words or motherhood statements and stuff like Threat and Error Management thrown in as subject matter in simple preflight briefings.
CASA has mandated that these are now an essential part of all briefings. Now there are long involved pre-take off "Safety Briefings" where the student does a Shakespeare Play of verbalising his every intention if something should go wrong and the dreaded "Threat" happens.
In a recent Flight International article on airline pilot training, a former Lufthansa captain Dieter Harms known in his country as "father of the multi-crew pilot licence" or MPL, writes about competency based training and warns that "instructors must be qualified to train to competency - based standards, not the old pass/fail criteria."
From what I see of competency based training, it is all about paperwork box ticking and lots of it at that. In the end the student still passes or fails. So can someone tell me what this bloke means when he derides "the old pass/fail criteria?" And can someone please tell me in clear and concise words what does Competency Based Training, purport to mean? And how does it differ from how I learned to fly in the RAAF and eventually became an airline pilot? No sarcasm, please
