Fresh concerns have been raised about military recruitment in schools following new research into London schools visited by the army.

Researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found that schools with the poorest students were considerably more likely to receive military visits than others. Fifty-one per cent of schools in the most disadvantaged fifth were visited between September 2008 and April 2009, compared to only twenty-nine per cent of the middle fifth. The news has fuelled concern about young people from poor backgrounds joining the armed forces due to limited employment opportunities. The recession has already exacerbated such worries.

‘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’.

A Ministry of Defence spokesperson told the Friend that the army visits schools only when invited to do so. The report’s authors accept that ‘an army visit is contingent on the school’s consent’ but say that ‘in practice it is more usual for the army to initiate the relationship’.

David Gee urged teachers and other school staff to re-consider 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 UK’s armed forces are already facing severe criticism for recruiting 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.

See http://www.informedchoice.org.uk/armyvisitstoschools.pdf to read the report or visit http://www.informedchoice.org.uk to