Lack of support means Last Post for school's cadet force

Published on Sunday 5 September 2010 15:14

THE last remaining armed forces cadet group at a Scottish state school has marched for the final time, as about 100 former cadets and their supporters carried their flags in a farewell parade through their home town.

The Combined Cadet Force enrolled pupils for more than a century at Knox Academy, but the school moved to disband its CCF group late last year, citing a lack of staff support and funding.

While the decision brought bitter complaints, members resigned themselves to the inevitable.

Four cadets led the procession through Haddington in East Lothian yesterday, carrying the flags the local troop traditionally used on Remembrance Day, including the CCF flag and the Union flag, through the town to St Mary's Church where they were left in a remembrance ceremony.

"It was a last march," said Gregor McMillan, head of cadets at the school. "They will go in there for safekeeping until such point as we need them again."

The flags will hang with other banners in the church from Scottish regiments, including some dating from the Napoleonic wars, he said.

"If the Cadets start up again, in the future, they will probably be taken back down and marched back along the street to the school and used again." But he doubted that it would ever happen, he said.

In 2006 the then chancellor Gordon Brown announced plans to expand CCF training - a mix of drill, military training, camping expeditions, and visits to military bases - for pupils at state schools, aiming to double the number enrolled.

Traditionally the overwhelming majority of CCF groups were established at private schools, but Knox Academy comprehensive was a lone Scottish exception, with records showing a CCF corps was active there from at least 1908.

Last December Knox Academy's head teacher, Janice Craig, announced the school's CCF would be disbanded. In an open letter she cited issues over storing weapons on school premises, and recruiting staff to run a group with only 20-30 young people involved out of a school population of about 840.

Sheena Richardson, provost of Haddington and a former teacher at Knox Academy, spoke of her "shock and horror", while both parents and former cadets, along with other local politicians, protested the end of a tradition they said had enriched the life of the school.

But East Lothian's executive director of education, Don Ledingham, later backed the decision by Ms Craig and the local CCF commander, citing plans to reform the group as a local Army Cadet Force drawn from a wider community than just the school.

"Each year it has become increasingly hard to recruit sufficient young people or staff to make the CCF a fully viable enterprise at Knox," he said.

The cadets marched with pipers through the town yesterday.

TRAINING FUTURE LEADERS

The Cadet Corps, the forerunners of the Combined Cadet Corps, were first formed in the aftermath of heavy British losses in the Crimean War to begin training young people for military life. Some were recruited from the orphans of soldiers or seamen.

The CCF, jointly funded by the Ministry of Defence and the individual schools taking part, now focuses more on leadership training and challenging activities, rather than military recruitment, although it also aims to encourage people interested in becoming military officers, and includes weapons training.

Private schools in Scotland maintain cadet groups, while others are based in the community.