British Army lower standards for recruits to the reading age of a 5 year old.

[Rheinstorff]

There are certainly a number of perspectives:

1. How does low educational attainment help in a world of (apparently increasing) volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, and where there is increased oversight of activity due to enhanced political sensitivity to inter alia perceivedinappropriate use of force?
2. How does low educational attainment help when our systems (even Infantry weapons, vehicles, comms and ISTAR) are more numerous, capable and frequently more demanding of the operator?
3. The Services, but particularly the Army, have always been a great social mobility mechanism from which individuals leave far more competent and capable than they enter and with far better prospects, very often far more than their school peer equivalents with no military background.
4. The education system seems to fail many young boys/men who go on to achieve impressive things in the Services.
5. In the absence of any significant improvement in the education system, perhaps we should better and more fully acknowledge that we have a duty to ourselves and our people to educate them more? There are potentially multiple benefits, beyond the obvious better educated workforce, including: increased competition for entry; even clearer societal benefits deriving from the Services; increased likelihood of better educated veterans more effectively advocating the case for Defence.