Dark Phoenix of Konoha by White Angel of Auralon

Part 46 - Academy Testing

"Very true. I'm much happier now that the new curriculum has been implemented than before. I always feared that we were sending out children that were simply not ready by far to survive in the field. And honestly, while there is nothing wrong with a team staying genin for two to three years, simply because the training beyond the academy curriculum takes time, and some things need more individualised teaching, on average, a team stayed genin for five years, which is really long," Atakuro commented.

"I especially like that we now have the option of keeping the children that try for the ninja path in mixed classes for two years, before we make the first cut. Those that clearly can't make the training work, because they don't have enough chakra, will be redirected into different paths. The idea of Lady Tsunade to train those with very small chakra reserves up to become employees at the hospital for low-level injuries and help mixing common medicine, next to other jobs that don't need much chakra was very good. This way, the children don't get their hopes up too much about being a ninja, but still doing something valuable for the village."

Naruto nodded, while watching how the last groups left the school grounds. Tsunade, as one of the advisors of the Hokage, specifially in charge of the overhaul of the hospital, had given Kakashi many suggestions for how they could firstly reduce genin casualties in the field, and secondly, increase personnel in lower level jobs, which still couldn't be given to pure civilians. It was one of the new projects the Fifth Hokage had started.

They lacked properly trained personnel for many jobs, which fell under the jurisdiction of the ninja side of the village. Some was covered by the clans, who sold things to the general public, like the Nara were known for herbal remedies and the Akimichis for long-lasting travel provisions, but they were quite expensive, as they were created on a case-by-case base normally. The clans only had limited means to do this.

Other things were in administrative positions, which required having taken oaths to keep secrets, which normal civilians wouldn't be allowed to do. Many of those that would have dropped out of the academy and the whole military before, could now be redirected early on and trained to take up these normally hard to fill positions. Some retired ninjas worked in them, but most of the time the active ninjas had to do them on top of their normal jobs, as they simply lacked numbers.

Kakashi also already planned, but which hadn't been announced to everybody yet, Naruto only knew because he was told to look out for a certain type of student for a pilot project while teaching at the academy, to set up specialised branches of low-level ninjas that were only there to do D-ranks that came down to assist with physically taxing jobs, which could be made easier with chakra. Like the missions that team seven had taken in the beginning, like painting storage halls, tiling swimming pools, cleaning out fields for farming and so on.

Ninja craftsmen teams would mean that the village wouldn't have to rely on professional craftsmen from the outside. The plan was to have local craftsmen take on several trainees to teach them their craft to a point that any type of normal repairs could be performed by the teams. The fully trained craftsmen would be in charge of larger projects and over a period of about ten years, the Hokage wanted to have enough teams running around to cut that part of D-rank missions out of the roster completely.

Genin, while they needed to have a way to earn money, shouldn't have to be forced to do D-rank missions all the time. They should train to be ready for C-rank missions in at most six months, normally it should take three months for the easier types of C-ranks, which were basically D-ranks, just outside of the village. If the village had teams that were trained for craftsmen jobs, which made up basically sixty percent of the D-rank pool each month, they could ask for more money, as the jobs would be done to higher standards. The craftsmen genin, the current working title, would be paid with a basic salary each month, plus standardised commissions, depending on the type of job and the number during that month.