Navy promotional literature Photo: daisybush/flickr CC:BY
Army approach to London schools recruitment queried
Concerns raised about recruitment practices
Fresh concerns have been raised about military recruitment in schools, following evidence that poorer students are most likely to experience visits from the army. The news has fuelled worries about young people joining the armed forces because of limited employment opportunities. Researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found that forty per cent of London’s schools received army visits between September 2008 and April 2009. However, fifty-one per cent of schools in the most disadvantaged fifth were visited, compared with only twenty-nine per cent of the middle fifth.
‘Letting army recruiters into schools may jeopardise young people’s rights and welfare,’ said Quaker researcher David Gee, who co-authored the report, ‘particularly as these visits are concentrated in the poorest schools’.
When questioned by the Friend, a Ministry of Defence spokesperson said, ‘The armed forces visit schools only at the invitation of the school’. He added: ‘These visits are to support schools’ careers programmes and to offer advice on careers in the Armed Forces’.
While the report’s authors accept that ‘an army visit is contingent on the school’s consent’, they say that ‘in practice it is more usual for the army to initiate the relationship’.
David Gee urged teachers and other school staff to reconsider decisions to invite the armed forces into their schools.
He told the Friend, ‘It’s important that teachers think about whether they want to allow military recruiters into schools, given that these are slick advertising campaigns that present a misleading picture of life in the armed forces’.
The armed forces are already facing criticism for taking advantage of the recession to recruit people facing economic hardship. Army recruiters in London reported a twenty to twenty-five per cent increase in enquiries in January 2009 when compared with the same period in the previous year.
The government is also struggling to defend the recruitment of sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds. The UK is the only European Union country to employ soldiers aged under eighteen, a policy recently criticised by Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights.
A shorter version of this article appeared on the website last week.
