THE army, councils and Scotland's children's commissioner will be asked for their views on military visits to schools following pressure from campaigners.
Quakers in Scotland and military recruitment watchdog Forces Watch appeared at Holyrood yesterday in the latest stage of their drive to see the armed forces subjected to more scrutiny when entering classrooms.
The organisations have launched a joint petition at Holyrood, which also calls for children to be given a balanced view of what a military career entails, which it was agreed would be taken forward following an evidence session.
Read more: Pay row talks between Calmac and RMT breakdown
Petitions committee convener Johann Lamont, the former Scottish Labour leader, said: "There is a dilemma between particular communities being targeted, but also recognising that some young people can potentially get good employment outcomes from making an active choice to go into the armed forces.
"We need to get a sense of what that looks like, what the safeguards are and the extent to which it is not being targeted at particular communities."
Following the hearing, Forces Watch coordinator Emma Sangster, said: "The Public Petitions Committee clearly saw our point – namely that there is need for more transparency, guidance and oversight on the issue of military visits to Schools in Scotland.
"We welcome the fact the Committee wishes to take our petition forward and seek the views of other stakeholders over military visits; especially student, parents and teacher organisations, local authorities and indeed the military itself.
Read more: Pay row talks between Calmac and RMT breakdown
"There are a number of points to address here - around the process of recruitment in schools and access to children within the education system for this purpose, the rights of pupils and parents, the number and distribution of military visits and who has overall authority over such visits."
The Ministry of Defence denied that it visited schools to boost numbers. A spokesman said: "The Armed Forces never visit schools for recruitment purposes and would only ever visit a school after being invited by a teacher to support school activities.
Read more: Pay row talks between Calmac and RMT breakdown
"These visits are of great benefit to pupils, and the three services consider it their duty to explain to children their role to protect the nation, and pass on valuable skills such as leadership, teamwork and citizenship."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel