A year on from the national launch of Skill Force, the initiative that has brought the military into schools to coach and encourage children showing signs of disaffection, useful lessons have been learnt on both sides.

Secondary pupils at 47 schools across Britain have acquired valuable life skills from experienced army and navy instructors, while the latter have discovered, among other things, that it takes more subtlety and imagination to impose discipline in a school than it does on the parade ground.

“You have to learn which buttons to press,” says former Royal Scot John Lothian. “With one of the boys, for example, you just have to threaten to tell his mother if he’s out of order, because he’s dead scared of her.”

But behaviour problems are infrequent, according to the team of instructors based at Rosehall High in Coatbridge, who are currently teaching 100 S3 pupils in five North Lanarkshire schools two half-days a week. The other schools are Caldervale High, Clyde Valley High, Coatbridge High and Bellshill Academy.

The instructors modestly attribute the pupils’ positive response and good behaviour to the fact that they are motivated to learn because they can see a purpose in what they are doing, and that is mastering the core skills of communication, numeracy, problem solving, teamwork and using information and communications technology through a range of outdoor and practical activities.

However, there is no doubt that a 15-year-old with mayhem in mind is less likely to try it on with a capable-looking character who has travelled the world, parachuting out of aircraft and wading through swamps, than with a teacher, no matter how effective, who has merely wrestled with the rigours of the rush-hour.

This, in part, was the thinking behind last year’s Scottish Executive decision to back the Skill Force project in North Lanarkshire to the tune of pound;170,000 over two years, following the successful pilot studies in Newcastle and Norfolk. By enlisting instructors with street credibility to provide challenging vocational training with the emphasis on team building and leadership, the Executive is aiming to improve school attendance, reduce juvenile crime, enhance pupils’ employment skills and encourage higher achievement in other subjects.

Indications that these ambitious objectives will be met over the two years are good. The pilot study schools have reported improvements in attitude, attendance and academic performance among their pupils, and among the North Lanarkshire pupils, who have had long enough for the novelty of Skill Force to wear off and disillusionment to set in, spirits remain high and motivation is clearly apparent.

Young Gavin Gray relaxes after completing an orienteering exercise in the Coatbridge streets around Rosehall High. “At the start they asked if I wanted to take the Duke of Edinburgh Award and learn cardiopulmonary resuscitation and stuff,” he says. “I said yes because it sounded good, but it has turned out even better than I thought it would.

“It’s not like: ‘Aw no, we’ve got maths or English or French again.’ You’re looking forward to it. It’s: ‘Oh, cool. We’ve got Skill Force.’ ” The fact that the instructors all have adventure pursuits qualifications as well as many years of experience in the military might suggest an endless round of tents, canoes and jumping off cliffs. But at least three-quarters of Skill Force activities take place in the classroom, so the pupil-appeal must arise from something more than regular chances to go over the wall. Many comment that “Skill Force is fun” and “It doesn’t seem like work”.

“You’re always doing something different,” explains Gavin. “You do get a bit of maths, maybe a wee calculation now and again, but nothing too big or too boring.”

For his friend John Johnstone, an important element in Skill Force’s appeal is the personality of the instructors. John says he has better relationships with them than with some of his teachers and attributes this to their differing approaches and personalities.

“The instructors shout at you occasionally but it’s not like in the classroom. They’re not moody like a lot of teachers,” he says.

In John’s case, however, the instructors have an advantage because he wants to join the army when he leaves school - as do a few others in the Rosehall High group, although not the majority. In fact, the group seems like an ordinary mix of teenagers with a variety of ambitions, and those who want to join the forces say they did before they began taking Skill Force.

So, fears that the initiative might be a veiled recruiting exercise do not appear to be justified, although 20 per cent of the North Lanarkshire team’s salaries is paid by the Ministry of Defence and the remainder by the Scottish Executive.

The MOD is open about its motivation. “Although not a recruitment project, Skill Force does help us to raise the profile of the armed forces as a career option among youngsters,” explained the Secretary of State for Defence, Geoff Hoon, at last year’s Armed Forces Careers Convention.

The MOD will evaluate the project at the end of two years, and success will be judged not on the numbers of fresh-faced recruits to the army, navy or air force, but against sound educational criteria such as percentage of awards gained and effects on school exclusions and attendance. Methods are also being developed to measure the impact on participants’ further education or employment levels, as well as any beneficial effects to students in normal classes arising from the absence of those on Skill Force courses.

Former naval officer Isla Tabberer, the Skill Force team leader in North Lanarkshire, is keen to emphasise the educational content of the project. Core skills training, in which the armed services have considerable experience, is its focus, she explains. “If pupils are taking a lot of Standard grades, they can drop one and do Skill Force instead. The idea is that it runs parallel to their existing studies without affecting them adversely.

“The main focus of the project is the Award Scheme Development Accreditation Network (ASDAN) curriculum. This provides awards rather than qualifications at the moment, but we’re currently in talks with the Scottish Qualfications Authority to try to get them accredited. Around 50 Scottish schools and colleges are already using ASDAN.”

Ms Tabberer’s team of three instructors, with three more to be recruited in a few weeks when a second cohort of 100 youngsters sign up for Skill Force, uses the ASDAN framework to develop worksheets and activities suitable for each group. Employability and life skills among participating pupils are further enhanced by helping them work towards Duke of Edinburgh and St John’s Ambulance Young Lifesaver awards. There is, she emphasises, no military connection in any of this and none of the activities is weapons-related.

Ms Tabberer is also keen to dispel any misconceptions that Skill Force is a boot camp for bad boys. “That’s just a lot of rubbish from people who haven’t taken the time to talk to us and find out what we’re really doing,” she says.

“When the pupils read that sort of stuff in the local paper, they were quite upset and wanted to know if it really was a description of them. Some of them said that if it was, they didn’t want to be part of the project any more. We had to spend quite a while discussing it with them.”

At last year’s launch, the Scottish Executive talked about aiming the project at “disruptive children” and “disaffected youngsters”. This seems to have been modified and interpreted in a variety of ways by the schools involved, incidentally helping the organisers to learn a few more lessons.

The military, it seems, have found it no easier to mould a group of disaffected teenagers into a finely-honed unit of high achievers than would any ordinary teacher. But in those schools where the selection process has been subtler and more varied, leading to groups with a mix of attitudes and aptitudes, the project has developed in much more workable and productive ways, say the instructors.

“What you get is kids helping each other,” says instructor Danny McLaughlin, “with the youngsters who are quicker on the uptake, but maybe haven’t been working all that well in school, giving a bit of a hand to their colleagues. When that happens they learn to work together as a team and everybody benefits.”

Skill Force seems to work best, says Ms Tabberer, when the participants are young people who could be achieving more highly if they were only given a bit of a boost.

“That could be a boost in a number of ways: in their confidence, in their individual skills, in their team working, or even just in their ability to come into school, sit down and do some work.”

Willie Galbraith, headteacher at Rosehall High, explains the approach his school has taken to the implementation of Skill Force. “We didn’t go out and identify disaffected young people or troublemakers, because if you chose a whole group like that the chances of success would be small. Young people can reinforce each other’s behaviour, good and bad.

“You’d also be labelling people in a way I think would be counter-productive.

“What we did was to look at it in terms of improving self-confidence and self-esteem and of building personal, social and employability skills. We were aiming for a group with a good range of performance, ability and attitude.

“What Skill Force is doing is providing a different context. So much in education is about learning in an appropriate context. What we teachers have to do is find that context.”

Mr Galbraith welcomes Skill Force as one of a number of promising initiatives being explored in North Lanarkshire and elsewhere to offer S3 and S4 pupils the opportunity to enrich their experience in ways that go beyond the Standard grade curriculum. He sees it as another good way of forging closer ties between children and working adults, between the classroom and the world outside school.

The military personnel bring some unique aspects to the project. “They provide a range of experiences that teachers don’t have,” Mr Galbraith says. “They form relationships with the youngsters that are different from the usual teacher-pupil relationship. They’re all on first name terms, for example. And in an area like ours, with 25 per cent unemployment, it’s important for young people to learn how to form appropriate relationships with working adults.

“They bring expertise in a wide range of physical, team building and leadership activities that the youngsters really enjoy. And, of course, being ex-military, all of the instructors are amazingly well organised.”

More organised even than teachers? “Oh no. You are definitely not going to get me to say that,” he says with a smile.

Regarding plans for the future, a spokesman for the Scottish Executive says: “We are very encouraged by the initial results of the Skill Force initiative, which is clearly making a difference. Once the pilot is completed next year, it will be fully evaluated before roll-out to other areas is considered.”

ROLLING OUT SKILL FORCE

The Ministry of Defence’s Skill Force initiative, offering potentially disaffected teenagers the opportunity to develop valuable life skills, was rolled out across England in September 2001, a year after the pilot was launched in six secondary schools in Newcastle and Norfolk.

It was expanded to operate in a further 41 schools in another nine regions: Great Yarmouth in Norfolk, Leicester, Nottinghamshire, Islington in north London, Birmingham, Rochdale in Greater Manchester, Knowsley on Merseyside, Bristol - and Coatbridge in Lanarkshire, the first Scottish pilot. This now gives 1,200 selected 14 to 16-year-olds a chance to benefit from a more vocationally focused curriculum to improve their employment prospects.

The initiative involves small groups of recently retired armed services instructors visiting schools about one day a week to work with teenagers showing signs of disaffection with education. Military skills are not taught, but the scheme relies on the services’ reputation for communication and team-building skills to encouraging greater self-confidence, responsibility, teamwork and problem-solving abilities among the pupils. They drop one or two exam subjects - GCSE or Standard grade - to take part in a range of vocational based activities and can gain qualifications such as Duke of Edinburgh Awards and St John’s Ambulance first aid certificates.

Skill Force is partially centrally funded from the Treasury’s Invest to Save budget.