UKC

At risk of another 300 posts, can anyone explain why we have a training board for each country and one for the UK. And why is the English one based in Wales!?

In reply to MG: Really? another one of these crap topics....as if the MCoS one wasn't enough?

In reply to MG: We don't have 'one for the UK' - The MLTUK does a very different role from the 4 national boards.

One of the main roles of the Boards is moderation of course providers so even if there was one board they would ideally need professional officers based in Scotland and NI.

The co-location of the MLTE and MLTW is probably due to the fact that PyB is the national mountain centre for both England and Wales.

Some of the professional officers post on here so you may get a better answer from them.

In reply to MG:

MLTS does the Winter ML which none of the others do, other than that I imagine administration purposes? When I was living in Scotland I registered for my SPA with MLTS but did the training in England and the assessment in Wales.

Discussing this in the Dolomites as he was pre-training boards and I was clueless I believe each country set up its own authority to providing qualifications in the mountains in the 60s/70s and then at some point they all joined forces under "MLT" (MLTUK) which nowadays co-ordinates each home nation training board and also administers the MIA/MIC and IML which no individual board does.

Why MLTE are in Wales, because the National Mountain Centre for England and Wales is there??

I could be wrong but noone else has offered anything better yet!

In reply to Mark Stevenson:

Sorry I was writing mine while you had already written yours I didn't mean yours was a rubbish answer!!

In reply to MG: Because we have a thing called history and if we started from here we would do it differently. The Mountain Training Boards started in 1964 with the MLTB and since then have been moving gradually closer together to make sure standards are the same whether you do an SPA in Capel Curig, Aviemore or Hathersage. The process will continue and rightly so. A few years ago the names changed to better reflect the home nation status and which boards are responsible for which area of the UK.

The English Board is based in Wales because the English national centre is based there (history again) and it is run by the Mountain Training Trust which is made up of the MLTE, MLTUK and BMC. It offered a favourable place to be based. However the MLTE also has a presence in the BMC office in Manchester, which last time I looked was in England.

We change gradually and thus are more likely to get it right. As a user of the boards you can register with whichever board you want to, though most people register with the board of the country in which the live.


Doug

In reply to oggi:

"Who should I register with?
You should normally register with the organisation which covers your home nation i.e. candidates living in Wales should register with Mountain Leader Training Wales. However if you are Welsh but living elsewhere in the UK and you may still wish to register with MLTW it is accepable to do so."

From the MLTW website. Just for interest.

In reply to ligemidio: Register with whoever you want to. I am Welsh, I live in England and work all over the UK. You will get the
same service with whichever Board you register with.

Doug

In reply to oggi:

OK OK I was posting for interest of other readers of the post and it happened to relate most closely to your post. Don't have to get antsy with me.

In reply to oggi:


<boggles>. OK thanks, basically bureaucratic mess/inertia.

In reply to ligemidio:
>

I've always been led to believe that Plas Y Brenin was the English National Mountain Centre. It states on the back page of the brochure

"Plas y Brenin is run by the mountain training trust on behalf of Sport England" no mention of Sport Wales or who ever the welsh counterpart is.

In reply to ligemidio: You must have a very low "antsy" threshold. I was not being in the least difficult, I thought I was being helpful. I am away in the States at the moment so only getting on line at odd times.

In reply to oggi: Doug's reply seemed pretty accurate and reasonable to me. I work as the Chief Officer for Mountain Leader Training, so am in a reasonable position to add a bit of detail. As has been pointed out, much of the background is historical, but we still need home nation boards for several reasons; dealing with the various home nation sports councils (who set targets for their own countries), dealing with home nation education organisations and funding streams, and ensuring that provision of courses is best able to serve local needs; by having Board members elected by the various stakeholder organisations.

At UK level we try to coordinate resources so that we don't duplicate effort, and to ensure universal recognition of the qualifications. We are working on siplifying the registration process so that people should be able to just register for the award rather than completing what must seem like virtually a citizenship exam to work out who and why to join beforehand!

We are aware that it all appears obtuse to the people who just want to sign up for a qualification and don't care about all the internal politics and are working hard to create a simpler interface. However, every step forward requires negotiation with a lot of organisations (government, National Councils, advisory bodies, etc etc) and also safeguarding and promoting the existing qualifications. I thought it would all be pretty simple when I took on this job 3 years ago, but I underestimated the task ahead! We are making progress though and you should see clear signs of this over the coming months on the Mountain Leader Training website (www.mltuk.org)

In reply to Alan M:

Well I read that too but don't half the people there speak Welsh? Is there a Sports Wales? And doesn't it have a Welsh name? Welsh enough for me unless there is somewhere else specifically for the Welsh.


IRT Oggi:

"antsy" doesn't mean "difficult"
It means impatient and considering I just posted a quote relating to something you said and you were impatiently correcting as though I was wrong when it wasn't even my own opinion me I feel antsy is a valid accusation.
p.s. maybe you didn't mean it to sound so "do whatever the hell you like it doesn't really matter" but actually it kinda did.

In reply to Steve Long:

So you would be the man to ask then: how are the government involved? Just curious after my chat with the old boys whom were before the whole system and thought the system was self regulating and not even related to the government??