Combining cadet forces with state education
Times Online, 5 September 2009
State schools and Combined Cadet Forces might seem to make unlikely partners — the CCF is traditionally thought of as an extracurricular activity embraced by public schools — but things are changing on playground-cum-parade ground.
The imbalance began to be corrected in September 2007 when, as part of a three-year trial, the Ministry of Defence, in partnership with the Department for Children, Schools and Families, established six new CCF contingents in state schools.
One of the state schools joining the scheme is the 2,200-pupil Thomas Deacon Academy in Peterborough, where Alan McMurdo, a former Royal Navy officer, is one of a growing band of headteachers who are CCF enthusiasts. He appreciates the scheme for the qualities of confidence, self-reliance, self-discipline, resourcefulness and the sense of service to others that it generates.
Again at the behest of the MoD and DCSF, a pilot scheme is under way in which a handful of London independent schools, including the City of London School, share their CCF facilities with nearby state schools. In City of London’s case, the partner is St Thomas the Apostle College in Peckham, southwest London. Other tie-ups are expected in the coming months.
At City of London this partnership enters its third term next week. Sixteen of the original CCF cohort of 20 from the Peckham School join their City of London contemporaries working towards their initial cadet qualification in subjects such as first aid, weapon safety and shooting proficiency.
“Most of the 16 should gain their proficiency awards by this October,” says the City of London headmaster David Levin. “And we’ll also be joined next week by a new cohort of 20 boys from Peckham, with yet another 20 following next year. On the whole it has been a successful partnership. We may have had to work a little harder than usual to communicate the mindset of the CCF to boys with no tradition at their own school of complying with the expectations of such an organisation, but our own boys derive a huge amount of benefit from the CCF, and it’s great to think that those advantages are now being made available to boys at a Peckham comprehensive.”
Large numbers of men and women who enjoyed taking part in the MoD’s CCF scheme when they were at an independent school go on to join the Army, Navy or RAF as adults. The British Army is the biggest single employer of Old Etonians, and it can be no coincidence that Eton has the oldest established corps of army cadets of any British school. It was founded as the Eton College rifle corps in 1860 when an invasion of Britain by Napoleon III was feared, and now functions as a CCF contingent with both Army and Royal Navy sections.
High-profile military men who entered the Armed Forces having served in a school CCF include the newly-appointed head of the British Army, General Sir David Richards. He joined the ranks of the CCF at the East Sussex independent school Eastbourne College, eventually becoming senior cadet there, as well as head boy and head of rugby. Now serving as a school governor when his day job permits, he returned last year to deliver a lecture illuminated by his first-hand experience.
Like other independent schools, City of London stresses that the aim of the CCF is not to be a recruiting agency for the regular Forces. Although some of the training is of a military nature, it places more emphasis on practical, outdoor and adventurous training. The headmaster adds: “In response to those critics who fear that the nation’s schools are being used as recruiting grounds, I would have to say that, at City of London anyway, if that is what the MoD are doing, then they have been singularly unsuccessful. I think they’ve recruited one boy from us in the past three years. Although there is a military underscoring to the CCF, with cadets going on parade, engaging in night-time manoeuvres and the rest of it, the main focus of the CCF is on adventurous outdoor activities. The facilities and opportunities are fantastic, particularly for urban boys who don’t otherwise get much chance to gain their glider pilot’s licence, for example.”
At St Dunstan’s College in Catford, southwest London, another participant in the partnership scheme, the main CCF activity throughout the year — shared with a neighbouring state school — is scuba diving. About 20 boys and girls from a new Catholic school, St Matthew Academy, Lewisham, southwest London, are now learning alongside about 200 pupils from St Dunstan’s.
Each, perhaps, will gain as much from the experience as Sir Max Hastings, the journalist and military historian. An enthusiastic member of the Charterhouse School CCF in the 1960s, he has clear views: “Like most normal teenagers of my day, those experiences with the cadet force exposed me to something which every boy — and every girl who wants it — should be allowed to have: adventure.”