Updates on £50m for over 300 new Cadet units in disadvantaged state schools

Here are several updates following last week’s government budget announcement that £50 million would go to expanding the number of state school Combined Cadet Forces to 500 (an increase of over 300), focusing on disadvantaged schools:

* Schools Week have discovered that the request for the extra £50m government funding for the expansion of Combined Cadet Forces into around 300 more state schools was made by the MoD

* Criticisms of the funding decision have come from the National Youth Agency (“it’s a real missed opportunity not to have invested some of it in good quality youth work which delivers ‘character’ and a whole lot more besides for young people”), and the Quakers (“Ultimately, militarism in schools leads to two kinds of recruitment: the recruitment of teenagers into the armed forces, and the recruitment of wider society to be war ready. Both go undebated. Why can’t we invest in education for peace, not war?”)

Lastly, it’s important to note that there are roughly 170 ‘community’ Army, Sea and Air Cadet units based in schools, something that the MoD is encouraging; some of them are purely for students at the school, and do activities in school time, so they are not that different to the CCF (source: draft of MoD Youth Engagement Review 2011, obtained by ForcesWatch by Freedom of Information request in July 2012).

See more: cadets, military in schools/colleges, recruitment, education, military ethos