Defence secretary announces more cadet units in schools to instil discipline and loyalty

[noblegiraffe]

The Troops to Teachers programme to instil discipline in today's youth was a total failure (no one wanted to do it), so there's a new plan to bring the military to the disaffected and disobedient. 500 extra cadet units will be opened in schools across England and Wales by 2020, focusing on areas of particular deprivation or high ethnic minority representation(!)

www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/defence-secretary-announces-expansion-cadet-units-schools

What a load of old crap.

My DD is an air cadet - she shoots guns. I don't want the disaffected and disobedient anywhere near guns.

Good idea.it's optional and the opportunities are fantastic.

I think Tes are reporting old news. This initiative was started about 5 years ago - there must be 300-400 cadet units in state schools now.

There was cadet unit at my school 30 years ago so it isn't new

I wonder whether the opportunities that cadets will be getting at private school will be the same as the opportunities in the highly deprived, stuffed with ethnic minorities school.

I'm a pacifist so no thanks!!

I know it has its merits but I am sure there are better things. I saw a fabtastic thing about a boxing gym the other day . It's an Alternative Provision school (run by a woman!) and a mentor (who is/ was a boxer) works with them but he also comes and sits in English and maths lessons with them and works with them. Their academic results are amazing.

Lots of schools already have D of E.

Will it be what cadets can do to the disaffected or what the disaffected could do to cadets?

The cadets used to offer some great opportunities, but in recent years with cuts, additional health and safety, and the military distancing themselves it has become a shell of what it used to be.

I do agree that the discipline respect and responsibility it teaches is a good thing.

Clavinova I think it's £50 million of new money, and the cadet website says that the expansion will now be targeted at poor kids where previously it was demand-led.

What's dissaffected??

Private schools tend to have Officer Training Corps rather than army cadets ...

See, this is what to do with the poor. teach them to follow orders unquestioningly. Bring back national service I say!!

That'll teach them to know their place.

Sorry - bit cynical. But, as I said, I'm a pacifist!

I prefer models in London where they take them to parliament, for example, and provide inspirational role models and speakers and mentors. Or schools who work with the support of sports clubs, for example. Or try to engage fathers.

The successes in London should all be broadened out.

Oh wait. Funding. Silly me.

Is this some kind of National Service by the back door?

It does concern me that it basically appears to be a recruitment drive for poor kids and ethnic minorities.

burn - yes, I think it is : to please the braying Tory backbenchers!

Seems a bit pointless really - I doubt the disobedient and disaffected will be the types likely to be queuing to join up. Or even if they were persuaded to, I doubt they'd stick at it once they found out they had to do as they are told.

This is a New Labour policy - Gordon Brown 2008

www.theguardian.com/education/2008/apr/06/schools.uk

It's been quite a while since the Tories had a new idea.

Wow, that article about Labour's plans was much more full-on than the one about the Tory plans. To create a greater affiliation with the military and improve public perception of the armed forces?

Last month the National Union of Teachers pointed to evidence from the Rowntree Trust that suggested the MoD was focusing disproportionately on schools in the most disadvantaged areas and targeting vulnerable pupils without clearly outlining the risks of an army career.

Given that it was a Labour policy for different stated reasons and it is coming from the Dept for Defence not Education, this is quite clearly a recruitment drive.

I think if you looked at he average squaddie eolian , or watched the programmes on TV about young uns in the military, you would find that isn't actually the case.

There is still an active idea that if you a bit of a bad sort, the military is the place for you.

Piggy all schools visit Parliament its part if the anti terrorist curriculum but it's only a few kids from each school each year.
Visiting Parliament doesn't give safe space to develop new skills for kids in poor areas though.

Army cadets can be a lifeline for many poor, underprivileged children who are being systematically failed by the school system. Joining is voluntary. It offers young people a supportive, structured framework in which they can get a fresh start, meet new people and learn new skills. It is free - unlike most other extra curricular activities.There is no expectation or compulsion for them to go on to join the Army.

It’s all very well for the chattering classes to sneer at this and vaunt their pacifist credentials. Their children are probably learning violin and playing tennis in their spare time. Nice if you have £££££ to spare, and supportive family to pay fares or ferry you around. Many of the talented young people at cadets have none of this, and need help to get the uniform and to attend camps etc. It is one of the very few avenues open to them.

Exactly. It's free. Kids who will never go on a plane are learning to fly gliders at air cadets. Kids who've never had a holiday are going in adventure camps, they're doing public services btecs, a tonne of sports, Duke of Edinburgh etc. Have a loom at their websites then consi6whetber highly disadvantaged kids might not bene6from this in areas where there are not the facilities nor money to do something else.
What's the alternative? Crime, gangs, disaffection

The article also says:

"The Tories said an independent report by the University of Northampton showed that cadet forces contribute to increasing social mobility and help improve attendance and behaviour among pupils who have previously been excluded.

"The report also found that cadet forces help children receiving free school meals achieve their potential, that their social impact is greater than the annual cost of the cadet programme to the defence budget, and that cadet forces "help make communities more inclusive by helping people to overcome disadvantages in the way school does not".

Anyone familiar with that report?

Because it seems to me that this was formative in the thinking behind the continuation of this Labour policy, done for exactly the same stated aims.

This seems to be an example that when the Tories do something it must be nasty, but when anyone else does it it's fine.

Cadets btw don't have a recruitment arm, and you don't have to have served to run one. I would agree that the young people who join self-select to do so, and it probably builds on an existing interest. But really it's not that different to Scouts, if you look at what they actually do (though more of it involves khaki and mud)

I think it's really cynical and nasty to target low-income children to join the forces. If people want to join the forces when they are young adults, preferably because they want to, and not because there's no other reasonable options available to them, then that's up to them.

But offering it as the option for kids who don't reasonably have many other options is just breathtakingly transparent. It's just old-fashioned cannon-fodder thinking under a new, "progressive" guise.