Specialisation civilian qualification

[druadan]

They are keen to put you through pretty much any education you want to do, you just have to go to the schoolie and ask. Anything that they don't have enough demand to run themselves or that they won't pay for, they will still give you financial support in the form of Learning Credits and offer you any resources they have available.

Pashtu is one of a very few languages in the Corps you can actually get paid for speaking. Assuming I passed the exam at the end of that course (not had the results yet) I will get a one off bonus, if I continue learning it and take the next level up I would qualify for £3 a day extra whenever I was working in an operational theatre where the language was relevant. The more you do the more you get paid. The education department also pays £20 per hour for you to teach people - a lad I was on the Pashtu course with is running French lessons in theatre and getting paid for it. Obviously there has to be a demand for the classes, but often in theatre lads will take up an interest to fill down time. Languages, especially middle-eastern ones, are also useful if you want to go into something like Electronic Warfare, and I imagine even more so if you're working in something like Int Corps rather than Royal.

[Kikaku]

After the 32 week course, is it possible to specialize in languages such as Spanish and Arabic ?

[druadan]

You can't specialise in them as your job, but as above, they are more than happy to support your learning of them in your own time as much as possible.

[mitch_boxing]

I am not in the corps yet but I can say what Artist said a while back, that definetly made me wake up . It aint no democracy!! In the military you are told what to do and when. Being able to do quals in the situation that the world is currently in is probably quite low. Afghanistan + Iraq could go on for years for all we know.

Mitch

[druadan]

Mitch, with no disrespect intended, I am in the military and it is perfectly possible to do qualifications, so long as you're willing to put the effort in and whoever is running the courses is flexible. The Open University have a good relationship with the MoD, and as such officers are allowed to invigilate exams, deadlines can be adjusted to suit operational requirements and so on. There's even a dit about a lad sitting his final exams in the torpedo room of a sub. If you want to study, you can. It just won't be handed to you on a platter.