Madeleine Moon – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Defence

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Madeleine Moon on 2015-12-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, whether the ratio of students to instructors varies across his Department’s centres which provide force development and adventure training; whether risk assessments have been carried out on the student to instructor ratio in those centres; whether those risk assessments have been changed at any time in the last 10 years; and if he will make a statement.

Mr Julian Brazier

Force Development (FD) and Adventurous Training (AT) are governed separately. AT instructor to student ratios for each approved AT activity are laid out in Joint Service Policy (JSP) 419 (Joint Services Adventurous Training), which can be found at the following website:

www.raf.mod.uk/rafhpa/rafcms/mediafiles/3033F0D5_5056_A318_A81B12353A721C24.pdf

FD is a term predominantly utilised by the Royal Air Force and is made up of many delivery mechanisms, including AT, collective training and military exercises. The instructor to student ratio varies according to the activity risk assessment, which is carried out for each activity. Where AT is used as a delivery mechanism for FD, instructor to student ratios within JSP419 will be used.

The policy for AT student to instructor ratios is regularly reviewed and updated.