A year ago the Army was looking at 14,000 soldiers who had been selected for promotion but didn't have orders to the professional schools required to move up. That number's down by 65 percent now, according to the top enlisted soldier at Training and Doctrine Command.
Just under 5,000 soldiers are still on the hook for their professional military education requirements, Command Sgt. Maj. David Davenport said in a town hall streamed live on Thursday.
Davenport credited a new strategy called STEP -- select, train, educate, promote -- to tackle the problem, which was caused by soldiers putting off school, rather than a shortage of spots.
"It's a small reduction, but, more importantly, the message is getting out that STEP is important, and if you want to get promoted, you've got to get to school," he told Army Times earlier this year, when the backlog was stuck at 12,000.
Some were kicking education down the road because of busy deployment schedules, while others were just blowing it off. Now, soldiers can no longer defer PME until after they pin on their new ranks.
Since January, soldiers hoping to move up to E-5 and E-6 must to go to the Basic Leader Course or Advanced Leader Course before promotion, respectively. Before, they were able to promote and get a waiver from their commands kick it down the road.
The same goes for prospective sergeants first class and the Senior Leader Course starting with fiscal year 2016 selections, and next year, master sergeants will go to the Master Leader Course.
Meghann Myers is the Pentagon bureau chief at Military Times. She covers operations, policy, personnel, leadership and other issues affecting service members.