Club Young Pilot Schemes 

Whilst it is good to have young people fully integrated into the club, sometimes it also makes sense to have a more focussed group with corresponding support from instructors for a group of young pilots.

There are plenty of resources that you may wish to use – many are listed here and we would be surprised to find a club that chooses to use all of them! They are designed to be adapted for local use. Some have come from Sport England’s Clubmark Scheme and some have come from clubs. We hope they provide you with a decent start point. All are included for completeness, but if your club is already an accredited BGA Junior Gliding Centre, you will already be using some of these documents in one form or another.

What’s in a name? This is well worth considering carefully. Traditionally with close links to the Services, gliding has often referred to young pilots as ‘Cadets’. Nowadays however, this can conjure up images of a uniformed mini-service, which is not necessarily attractive to all – and in our increasingly pacifist society may actually deter whole groups of people.

Clearly discipline is important within gliding, and developing personal discipline is one of the most valuable things gliding has to offer any pilot, but modern gliding clubs are a far cry from being a Services environment.

Documents

Introductory letter for parents and carers
Advice for parents and carers
Recruitment of sports leaders
Head Junior Coach role description
Assistant Junior Coach role description
Volunteer agreement form
Code of conduct (Oct 2010)
Code of conduct for junior members
Code of conduct for parents and carers
Pre-session risk assessment for junior sessions
Non-flying incident or accident guidelines
Non-flying incident or accident report form
Junior session attendance register