As Director Training and Education, Major General Tim Inshaw, is responsible for individual training and education policy across all three Services. Collective training responsibility rests with single Services, although he acknowledges inevitable cross-over between training phases and between individual and team development.

His own background includes student time at the Army Staff College and the Royal College of Defence Studies, and he has instructed at the School of Signals and the Army Staff College’s Junior Division. Coupled with regimental and command appointments (12 Armoured Brigade Signal Squadron, 9 Signal Regiment and 1 Signal Brigade) during all of which he was carrying out huge amounts of on-the-job training, and he laughs that he is ‘not an obvious choice for DTE, although you don’t necessarily want a professional educator. We have a number of those already in the Directorate.’

Eight years in the MoD specialising in capability, equipment programmes, resources and CIS completes the process which brings a user’s perspective to the appointment.

Not surprisingly, he is completely pro ELC and urges everyone in the Services to make full use of them. One of his key aims, however, is ‘to get all Service personnel qualified to level 2, which is five good GCSEs. After this they can use the ELC scheme to get to level 3.’ This is something that is of most interest to the Army, although the RN and RAF also have individuals who need education before they can realistically take advantage of ELC.

DTE assesses that level 3 is an important standard for Service people to achieve as ‘it is becoming the minimum accepted educational level in the civilian world.’ He is ‘committed to getting everyone to level 2 so they can then use ELC to get to the desirable end point which is level 3.’

Three-quarters of his time at present, however, is spent implementing package 1 of the Defence Training Review, first published in 2001. Package 1 is the plan to ‘transfer the vast majority of phase 2 and phase 3 technical training conducted across Defence to a new single site at St Athan in South Wales by 2013.’ This technical training includes aeronautical and mechanical engineering, and communications and information systems; courses currently undertaken at HMS Sultan, the School of Signals, the REME School and RAF Cosford.

Advantages include modern accommodation and reduced running costs, but DTE foresees the ‘most exciting development being the transformation of the way the education and training will take place. It will be modernised to be more agile and effective and to keep pace with the rate of technological change. It will be blended to include more use of distance learning, more use of IT, personal digital assistant (PDA)-based training, synthesised environments (simulation), with opportunities for individuals to learn at their own pace.’

All of these developments can, of course, be used for other training in the future, and he is particularly struck by the possibilities offered by the increasing use of PDA although there is no plan to issue them to every person in the Armed Forces. He would also like to see more training offered over the defence learning portal and believes that the internet as well as intranets has a significant role in the learning process.

His own experience tells him that today’s youngsters can multi-task and multiskill in a way that previous generations could not. He quotes his children watching TV with the sound off, listening to a CD while surfing the web on a computer. It would be sensible, he suggests, to exploit this technology in the delivery of training.

Accreditation work in the directorate continues. In some cases a military course qualifies the individual for an award, while in others some extra study or project is required. There is, he says, ‘potential to take this further but all training involving MoD resources must have military value,

regardless of the benefit to the individual.’ His final message highlights the importance of education in support of operations. ‘Regardless of how good the training, modern operations are complicated and Service people are often confronted by new and unfamiliar situations. Education broadens the mind, and enables individuals to think laterally and sensitively when responding to the challenges they face.’

At the end of May 2009 258,690 people had registered for ELC, and 31,820 claims had been made to the value of more than £30.6 million.