Newbie, leaving forces in a year

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Hey all,

Been in the royal signals, anyone else an ex scallie??, for nearly 6 years now and have recently signed off, i am well aware of the recession in this country but my wife (from the 15th of august anyways!) is due to have my first child (her second) in november and we decided that me being at home and having a stable lifestyle was more important than the money and job stability the army offers.

Joined up today because this has brought me to a large fork in my life, i am 90% sure that i want to get into IT when i leave (the other 10% is screaming PRO POKER PLAYER!!) but i am just unsure of how to go about entering into this career.

The only quals i have at the min are 7 GCSE'S, a GNVQ in IT and some ECDL that i done in army training, my initial plan when i left was to use my learning credits to go to a training provider such as cerco or jbc and enrol on one of their courses, after reading a few threads on here i am now unsure though my other idea is to get on an Access to Higher Education course at my local college and then go onto a Forensic Computing degree at DeMontfort University, i like the idea of this degree as it is so specialised and although there must be a lot of people with a regular computing degree i feel that a forensic computing degree would stand out from the crowd and let me enter the security side of IT rather than basic support or networking roles.

There is of course also the self study route towards the various vendor quals out there but that would require me to find an IT job with not much computing exp and not many computing quals, i'm just soo confused!!

Has anybody else on here done one of the training provider courses and found employment?? I was thinking that i could do one of those with the learning credits the army provides, get cerco/jbc to help me find a job and then self study for the vendor quals whilst employed. What does everyone think of the degree route though??

Sorry for the huuuuuge post, kinda went of on one there like, if anybody has any advice it would be much appreciated, and if anyone wants to chat poker i'm always up for that too lol

Cheers, and Hello!

 

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Hi welcome.

Ex scalie here too. Pull up a seat this might be a long one.

I think you really need to decide where your priorities lie first. Do you need to go in to paid employment on leaving or can you really afford to spend 3 or 4 years at Uni with possibly little to no income ? What does your wife think? with 2 kids to support I think I could guess.

If you can afford the drop in income you might be pleased to learn that the MOD will now fund your tuition fees for a foundation or undergraduate degree programme. Have a look here: http://www.enhancedlearningcredits.com/mssql/pf_fehe.html, It's a bit like the ELC scheme except that they will pay the full amount of your tuition fees rather than just the amount of an ELC towards it. Unfortunately the number of participating FE providers is limited and you may not find one to your liking.

It's also unlikely you will find an I.T security job without putting in the hours first in those support or networking roles after all how else are you going to learn about what you are meant to be securing.

How long ago did you sign off? Don't hang about, get your resettlement plan in to action now. Don't make the mistake that most do of trying to fit in a a resettlement package so that it fits in with your leaving date.
i.e your course lasts all of November, you hand in your I.D card on the 1st of December.

I'm normally a big advocate of self study, in your case this is not viable, you simply won't have the time.
There will always be demands on your time from the military. Your best bet is probably to get yourself away from the military environment and family life and on to a few courses with a training provider. The sooner the better. Any time you have left could be spent on some work experience whilst your still being paid by the military or if you can wangle it, get yourself transfered over to your nearest I.S troop and get as much hands on experience as you can for your last few months. I'm sure they will be glad of an extra pair of hands.

As for Cerco or JBC, be aware, the quality of there courses I can't comment on but the qualifications they are offering are in house qualifications and not worth the paper they are written on. There are better providers out there though where you will at least leave with a few MCP's.

Your resettlement grant will not go very far - £534 if I remember, however a number of allowances are available to you and an "understanding" provider should be able to make the most of these.

If you have served for 6 years then you will be entitled to the following:

20 working days graduated resettlement time - which in reality is actually 28 days as you may include weekends for allowance purposes.

You can therefore claim:

Night Subsistence allowance (accommodation): £80 per night x 28 = £2240
Day Subsistence allowance (meals): £27.01 per day x 28 = £756.28
Resettlement Training Grant: = £534.00
1 x lower Tier Enhanced Learning Credit: £1000

A grand total of £4530.28, more than enough to get yourself on a decent MCSA course.

Don't feel like an M.P for claiming all those allowances, you may not be aware that the armed forces pay review body takes them in to account when deciding your monthly pay, so make sure you use them all, you've earned them. You will be pushed towards doing a course with the C.T.P. Don't, as all you will be entitled to claim is the Resettlement Grant as you will be staying in military accommodation.

The most important thing you can do now is to get your arse in gear and get a plan of action sorted out. Have you had all the relevant interviews? completed a C.T.P workshop etc, are you sticking away cash every month? Have you completed a MOD form 363, authority to attend resettlement activities?

One thing you might find hard to do is to start putting your needs first now before any loyalties to your troop or your mates, get over that now and start looking out for you and your missus, trust me once you walk out that gate you really are on your own.

If you need any help send me a p.m.

 

Hello & Welcome to the Forum.

 

Hi & welcome to CF

NB