Veterans bring ‘military ethos’ to schools

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/jan/22/veterans-military-ethos-schools

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The pupils of year five at St Aloysius Catholic primary in Roby, Liverpool stand shoulder to shoulder, listening closely as the man in combat trousers and army boots outlines the task ahead.

Dressed in their blue PE shorts and white tops, they stand tall as the instructor speaks. First they have to imagine they are stranded in a desert and work out what they need to survive.

The man in charge of operations, Wayne Barker, used to be a corporal in the Royal Signals, serving 10 years as a communications expert and physical training instructor, putting regiments of 450 soldiers through their paces. He has done tours of Afghanistan and Iraq, and used to live in Germany.

Now, for more than a year, he has been spending three days a week at St Aloysius, bringing the “military ethos” to the school hall and classrooms, instilling “character” in little girls with intricate plaits, and boys with eczema scabs behind their knees.

Barker, 29, is employed by Commando Joe’s, one of a small but growing number of organisations that employ mainly ex-servicemen and women to work in schools with the aim of helping children develop “character” and “resilience”.

These are the new buzzwords at the Department for Education (DfE). Among politicians and policymakers there seems to be a sense that children are lacking the “grit” required in the modern world.

In December the education secretary, Nicky Morgan, announced £4.8m of funding for projects such as Commando Joe’s to help schools instil character in pupils. This month the department invited schools to put themselves forward for the 2015 DfE character awards, with a £20,000 prize.

So how does it work in practice? Barker is known to the children not as Wayne, or Mr Barker, but as Commando Joe. His day starts with a breakfast club; then he visits every class to chase up attendance and punctuality, during school assembly he does a five-to-10-minute “wake and shake” session for the whole school (including staff), then he works in class directed by a teacher, mentoring small groups.

At break time he’s in the playground “providing a positive male role model presence”, then he’s in the imaginary desert with year five, focusing on “team building, resilience, bounce back, and acceptance of rules and communication”.

At lunchtime he helps staff supervise the queue, then, according to the schedule, “Commando Joe invites specially chosen pupils to have dinner with him as a reward and allows them to attend Commando Joe’s VIP table where we discuss manners, behaviour and the school day”. In reality it’s more relaxed.

When the Guardian visits, Barker splits the children into teams – one will build a shelter, the other an aqueduct to transport water from an oasis to the shelter.“Anybody know what an oasis is?” he asks

“Is it a drink?” asks one boy.

“The band?” suggests another.

Barker explains which oasis he is referring to then the timed mission begins and the children spring into action. By the end of the session, they manage (with help) to build a creditable shelter that all of them can fit in without collapse, and a slightly wonky aqueduct.

The shadow education secretary, Tristram Hunt, has also stressed the importance of character, recently telling a conference on the subject: “The great British spirit comes from our ability to overcome adversity and setbacks,” he said. “Character, resilience and the ability to bounce back: it’s what makes us British.”

Mike Hamilton started Commando Joe’s in 2009 after eight years in the Royal Engineers, working in bomb disposal, in Iraq, Afghanistan and Northern Ireland. He did a spell working with an outreach team going into secondary schools to promote the military, but felt “conflicted” about being involved in recruitment.

So he dreamt up Commando Joe’s, went on the BBC TV show Dragons’ Den and asked for £50,000 funding from James Caan and Duncan Bannatyne. They turned him down so Hamilton went his own way and it was the DfE that eventually came up with the money - £600,000 in 2011-12, £1 million the following year and another million in the latest round of funding.Now he has 62 mainly male instructors of whom all but 11 are ex-military, working in 256 primary and secondary schools. With the latest funding Hamilton is hoping to expand to 375 schools around the country, employing a further 20-plus instructors.

Even he’s slightly uneasy about the military element and experimented with substituting camouflage trousers with dark trousers. “But the parents thought we were the police and wouldn’t talk to us,” says Hamilton. Instructors do occasionally get asked by older children about their army careers and how many people they’ve killed, but in primaries it rarely comes up.

Not everyone is relentlessly enthusiastic about introducing a military ethos into the schools. Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers agrees developing character and resilience is an important aspect of the work in schools, but says: “A military ethos is certainly not the only way to achieve this.”

Organisations such as ForcesWatch, which scrutinises the ethics of military recruitment, have expressed their concern and the Quakers have written to Morgan condemning what they describe as the “ongoing militarisation of education”.

“Quakers believe that military ethos is not what young people need,” says the letter. “While it claims to engender altruism, aspiration and teamwork, these are not the exclusive preserve of the military. A military culture is one of blind obedience, not the critical thinking learners need, and is founded on the normalisation of violence.”

The headteacher at St Aloysius, Sheryl Wrigley, says she doesn’t really notice the military aspect of Commando Joe’s and is so pleased with Barker’s work that she has tripled his days. “We started with one day per week, then two, then three,” says Wrigley. “We don’t have any male teaching staff which is a big issue for us.

“I’m from a sporting background and I like that whole approach of team building and being there for each other, that resilience, learning how to face defeat and carry on. That was really important for us – giving the children skills for the future to help them to cope.”

How does she measure the scheme’s success? “We had a number of year six boys last year who were very difficult to engage in their learning. Then Wayne developed a sports leadership programme for them.” They were given the responsibility to organise lunchtime coaching sessions for the younger children, including a tournament with awards, and it transformed their attitude to school.While the government has boosted organisations like Commando Joe’s, the school still has to pay for it to provide staff. It costs £200 a day to employ him – more than £23,000 a year, paid for out of the pupil premium funding St Aloysius receives for disadvantaged children.

“For what you get back, it’s money well spent,” says Wrigley. “We all love him.”