Army Sgts. 1st Class Roshawn Constantine and Yevgeniy Parakhin are promoted Feb. 23, 2023, during a ceremony at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait. Constantine and Parakhin were promoted from the rank of staff sergeant. (Sebastian Rothwyn/Army National Guard)

The Army next year will reinstate a policy suspended during the coronavirus pandemic that most soldiers complete required school training before they can be promoted, the service announced.

Beginning in January, Army noncommissioned officers must complete mandatory professional military education courses before they can move up in rank, under the service’s Select, Train, Educate and Promote, or STEP policy, Lt. Gen. Douglas Stitt, the Army’s personnel chief, ordered in a Sept. 12 memorandum.

The STEP policy was suspended in 2021 after the pandemic largely shuttered travel and created a backlog of otherwise-qualified soldiers unable to reach promotion because they could not attend their required education course.

Since that time, the Army has allowed almost all noncommissioned officers selected for promotion to advance in rank on a temporary basis before completing their required education course work, from the Basic Leader Course for those advancing to sergeant to the Sergeants Major Academy for those advancing to sergeant major. Those soldiers were allowed to pin on their new ranks and received pay and benefits at their promoted level, though the promotions remained temporary until they completed their required course, Army officials said.

The pandemic-induced conditions that led the Army to suspend the STEP program no longer exist, according to Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael Weimer, the service’s top enlisted soldier.

“Therefore, we move forward, ensuring our soldiers have the training and resources they need to succeed as leaders in our Army,” Weimer said in a prepared statement. “STEP will help ensure our NCOs are ready to train soldiers to be brilliant at the basics and lead them through the reps and sets required to master the fundamentals needed to execute successfully as warfighters.”

The Army will continue to allow some soldiers to be promoted on a temporary basis without attending their education courses under circumstances that could halt them from attending those schools, Stitt wrote in his memo.

Those circumstances include soldiers deployed on combat missions or overseas rotations for more than eight months, pregnant and postpartum soldiers, or those enrolled in special training including the Army’s Software Factory or its artificial intelligence school, according to the memo. Stitt also wrote the policy waiver could be implemented again if the Army faces a shortage of soldiers in a particular rank for a specific job.

The reinstated policy could mean a longer wait for some soldiers to reach their next rank. Stitt’s memo noted the soldiers will be scheduled to attend their required pre-promotion school based on their qualifications as determined by a noncommissioned officer evaluation board or by their total promotion points, which include factors such as their physical fitness test scores, weapons qualifications scores, deployment times and technical certifications.

“Scheduling for [professional military education] attendance is merit-based,” Stitt wrote.