Troops to help discipline students
Government to recruit former soldiers, sailors and airmen to teach tough inner city schools
London: Battle-hardened former troops will be recruited to teach in tough inner city schools under radical plans to improve classroom discipline.
The Government wants to bring former soldiers, sailors and airmen to schools, official sources revealed yesterday.
The idea is based on a US scheme, which has had a profound effect on discipline and learning by providing disruptive pupils with role models. Education experts hope the macho image of former soldiers will inspire respect, especially among boys who have grown up without a father figure.
Under a ‘Troops to Teachers' programme, the Government will pay tuition fees for personnel leaving the military to take a teaching qualification.
It is designed for officers who already have a degree, and will fast-track them into the classrooms of Britain's toughest schools. The plans, to be formally announced this spring, are part of a raft of measures to put ex-servicemen into classrooms.
Education Secretary Michael Gove, unveiling his Education Bill last month, revealed he will establish ‘boot camps' in which expelled pupils, or those on the brink of expulsion, would receive a ‘military-style education' at special units separate from mainstream schools.
There are currently 16,000 youngsters under the age of 16 who are outside the school system, often because they have been excluded and no school will take them in. Whitehall sources said ministers were, in conjunction with military academy Sandhurst, putting the finishing touches to a scheme to retrain soldiers for the classroom.
They said it would be closely modelled on a US project called Troops to Teachers, under which some 16,500 service personnel have qualified as teachers since 1994.
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