Celebrate or commemorate? The Department for Education and VE Day
07/05/2015
The DfE's recent communication to schools about the 70th anniversary of VE Day on 8 May suggests that schools 'will want to celebrate and commemorate' the event. This is the third set of learning materials promoted by the DfE within the past year around military issues. Do 'celebrations' around remembrance events inevitably drown out the more cautious messages about the price of victory?
ForcesWatch Comment
Questions for general election candidates about the military and young people
22/04/2015
Here we provide two sample questions that you can ask candidates as well as key points and further sources of information. You can find your candidates contact details using https://yournextmp.com/. Let us know if you get any responses!
ForcesWatch Comment
Quakers go to war over ‘bellicose’ school pack that promotes ‘pro-military values’
03/03/2015
The Government has been accused of helping indoctrinate children with pro-military values through a new schools pack aimed at promoting the armed forces.
The Independent
Government accused of military propaganda in the classroom
27/02/2015
The Government's material for schools about the armed forces has been criticised today by the human rights group ForcesWatch and Quakers in Britain.
ForcesWatch / Quakers in Britain press release
Veterans bring ‘military ethos’ to schools
27/01/2015
Growing number of organisations employ ex-servicemen and women to work in schools helping children develop ‘character’
The Guardian
Cardiff event on ‘Red Hand Day’ 2015: ‘Ban schoolyard recruitment’
26/01/2015
On Red Hand Day (the annual international day of campaigning against the use of child soldiers), 12 February, 2015, a well-attended event at Cardiff's Temple of Peace called for an end to military presence and influence in schools and colleges in Wales. Featuring speakers from ForcesWatch and Fellowship of Reconciliation Wales, the event explored the nature of armed forces visits to schools and colleges in Wales, as well as the military's 'engagement' with young people in Wales more broadly...
Cardiff United Nations Association; Cardiff News Plus; Made in Cardiff TV
Military ethos – where’s the evidence?
26/01/2015
Jon Boagey, operations director [at the National Youth Agency], asks why military ethos doesn’t seem to need evidence to get government funding.
National Youth Agency
Army launches ‘rebranding’ and recruitment campaigns
21/01/2015
The Army is launching a publicity campaign to keep its work in the public eye, following the end of combat operations in Afghanistan.
BBC
Minister: cut teenage pregnancies with army cadets
20/01/2015
The Telegraph
Army cadet units could help cut the rate of teenage pregnancies, an education minister has said.
Lord Nash said teenage girls from single-parent families who had “never experienced the love of a man” could be deterred from forming “unsuitable relationships” if they enrolled in a cadet unit.
UK soldiers of 16 ‘too young’
12/01/2015
THE children’s commissioner for England has accused the armed forces of breaching the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child by recruiting soldiers from the age of 16.
Sunday Times