Learning – why me?

When looking at learning, we have all heard the cry: ‘I left school/university/college/home to get away from books, classrooms and desks! Away from people who wanted to teach me things I didn’t want to know. What do I want with learning and qualifications? Waste of time.’ While many people who join the Services have a genuine desire to learn a profession or trade, as well as serve their country, others may well hold views something like those expressed above.

However, few people stay in the Forces for a full career. Huge numbers leave early, and many others go long before retirement age. Even those who stay the course and last until they are around 40 or 55 will most likely have another career ahead of them. And the pendulum is now swinging towards a later end to the working life as the effects of medical developments, stock market collapse, government raids on funds and a smaller working population bite into pension provision.

Service leavers of all ages need to be able to compete with civilians for jobs, and they need learning and qualifications to help them match civilians’ years of experience. They must show that their Service training and experience has a value to a civilian employer. They should also show that they are ready to be the adaptable, teachable, flexible employee, ready to learn and practise new skills – the type of employee that is in demand in 2005.

Even people who do stay in the Forces for a full career find that they constantly need to learn new skills if they are to be up to their job – and certainly if they want to get ahead of some very stiff competition. While personal development may not appear formally on the annual appraisal, commanders and line managers certainly notice it. And the individual who is engaged in learning is going to be a good bet to go on that key career course.

Of course, learning and qualifications are not the only things that matter. But, while a combination of theoretical knowledge, common sense, practical and usable skills, experience and personal qualities may be the ideal, it is often the first of these attributes that gets its possessor the interview and the remaining attributes that land the job.

The trend towards learning is developing in the rest of society as fast as it is in the Forces. Most university students did not start their course directly from school. People with trade skills develop them further and learn specialisations in college; those with Modern Apprenticeships convert them into foundation degrees or HNDs; and the really high fliers develop broad skill sets.

So, even if learning for its own sake does not interest you, an awful lot of people are going to be ahead of you in the queue of life if you do not take it up. And please do not say that you have not got the time. We all have the time to go to the pub, enjoy parties, watch TV or read a book.

Find something that you enjoy, and learn about it. Take advantage of the money available to support you and go for it. Use all the Service facilities on offer. Talk with an education officer or personal learning adviser. Use Standard and Enhanced Learning Credits and read our sister magazine, Courses 4 Forces, to get ideas about how to use them.

Career articles this month cover a variety of subjects. Britain’s utilities industries – electricity, gas and water – employ people in a huge variety and size of companies. Reading a meter is so different from maintaining a pipeline and running a wind farm that any attempt to present a common view of the sector is bound to fail. We therefore try to introduce the reader to this area and leave it to them to look for the employment possibilities. It is a similar story in the railways, with every employment field represented in a sector that is looking for engineers and signallers to support its operations and cannot find enough of them.

Service leavers looking to stay in the public sector might look at prisons and probation, although this field also sees privatisation of its services. Telecommunications look set for another take-off as the requirements of telephones, e-mail, the Internet, e-commerce, security and, effectively, e-living start again to overwhelm existing networks, even if 3G has not been the rapid hit that some industry gurus predicted. Driving instruction, too, can be a profitable business that lends itself to a small start with greater things to come.

Finally, those who consider themselves to be experienced in management and supervision could do worse than look at the advantages of joining one of the institutes that specialise in this field. Formal qualifications and accreditation of prior experience at least translates some military expertise into terms understood by a potential employer.