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

I know its not aviation but..... That's a reduction down from that of a 7-9 year old!! Blimey! recruitment must be dire.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknew...cid=spartandhp

Surely that's only for officers, innit?

Interesting snippet from it.

I say it has nothing to do with Army standards but an example of the complete failure of the UK education system that can't produce literate people. Heaven forbid they check the three R's .... reading, [w]riting and [a]rithmatic..!

.....including punctuation and spelling?:=

Jack

I have spent a total of 3 years in the Falklands, between 1983 and 2002, and was collocated with the various Army units every time. It was not uncommon to have soldiers who could neither read nor write. In 1983 we used to do pay parades and some soldiers made their mark with a thumb print.
By far the best educated, and behaved, I served with were the Ghurkhas.

If they can’t read already, what a great opportunity for both the Army and the applicant. I can see benefits. Id rather leave education to the same team that brought us The Goons than Mexican drug cartels.

Being facetious, no sense over educating a grunt:) Wasn’t WWI won with actual 5yo’s in the trenches? I’m sure I read that somewhere??

Quote from elsewhere, “Do not look at the entrance standard as a measure of an organisation. Look at the quality of the leaver.”

in agreement with the others. how is this different to days of ol'? business as usual really

I was training recruits in the Royal Artillery '64-'65 (Oswestry); in those days the Army tested recruits' intellectual abilities on joining, and graded them from SG (Standard Grade) 1, down to SG 9.

To join the Royal Artillery, recruits had to be SG5 or above. In every training platoon of 40 there would be 10 or so SG5, who were unable to write a brief factual account of how they got to the camp from home, or to add 2 2-digit numbers. The same recruits would be unable to read anything beyond a 2-word newspaper headline. This was all put right by the end of the 8-week course. It was rarely, if ever, the result of lack of intelligence; it was the result of rotten schools and teachers, who allowed some of every class just to "sit at the back" with no encouragement, while they dealt with the more receptive pupils. Overcrowding and lack of funding were also a root cause.

So what's new in 2020? Not much, we still have some poor schools and poor teachers, lack of proper funding, and overcrowding. Giving pupils iPads isn't an answer; it's papering over the cracks.

(To put it into perspective, the infantry regiments accepted recruits down to SG9, but in those days infantrymen were not expected to be intellectuals.)

Well I knew plenty of people who had EPC and EPC(A) during the mid-80's and they were equally barely literate.

A sad reflection on both the schools outside and the internal education system.

At that time schools were saying to pupils 'don't worry about spelling and grammar - so long as you can get you idea across.............'

:-(

Arc

Not surprised … I had a boss that passed me his work to check before it was posted.

During the days of National Service the Army had no choice. For a large number of them the first six weeks was intensive lessons on reading and writing. Numbers came later when they learned to set a gunsight.

That happened in the late 90's! The Stanine Score for TG9 was reduced, so we got f**kwits!!!
I refused to give my initials when passed weather info from Kinloss!
KSS: We're now GREEN, Can I take your initials?
Me: What's changed?
KSS: The Colour Code, we're now GRN
Me: So what's changed?
KSS: The colour code! Can I get your initials?
Me: NO!, What's changed?
KSS: The QFE is now 998

WTF!!!!!!!!!!!
(Colour code is based on Cloud-Base & Visibility, but a change oF QFE/QNH was useful to ScATCC (Mil) as we passed weather onto to aircraft inbound to Scottish airfields!)

One had a maths master at school who was a proud veteran (well he told us often enough) of the Rifle Brigade (as it was then).

He claimed that it was the first regiment to insist that all its soldiers could read and write.

During the Vietnam War, the US army essentially recruited functional illiterate’s, project 100,000 or McNamaras Morons. Forest Gump wasn’t all fiction!

Some had physical impairments, some were over- or under-weight, and many had very low mental aptitude—often to the point of being mentally handicapped!

There are some seriously good eggs out there who struggle with the academic side so I’m glad the Army is taking them on and will put them through the education centre sausage factory (kicking and screaming probably).

Speaking as a Yank who graduated from a very middle of the road US Public High School, I am shocked and dismayed that the country that gave the world Shakespeare, the Kings English and a beautiful example of how to speak so properly without really moving your lips from her Majesty yesterday, I am astounded that you Brits are closing in on the US in education. Keep it up and we can have exchange students between the UK and Alabama or Mississippi, the end result will probably be the same.

Agreed...the result will probably be along the lines of 'fix bayonet, engage en'...Don't need to R and R for that.
But that doesn't stop the p*ss-stained armchair warriors of PPrune pontificating.

The Sun is written for someone with the reading age of an average 7 year old, The Financial Times is written for someone with the reading age of an 11 year old.

The idea that you want intellectuals as privates in uniform has never been true, nor ever likely to be. The person sought is one who can be trained to follow orders.

In many cases over the centuries, the enlistment of someone in the army gave them a chance of a life, rather than an early death through malnourishment, health and welfare needs.

Unsurprising to many is the fact that the Army is able to turn out some reasonable citizens out of the dross that come out of civilisation, it doesn't always work but in majority of cases it does.

Blaming schools or the education system for the totally unacceptable numbers of illiterates and innumerates it released into socuety is exactly the same as blaming factories and the motor industry for the appaling build quality of BL cars in the '70s and '80s.
Lousy cars are not built by an industry or a factory, they are built by shonky, slovenly workers who take no pride in their job.
The same is true of illiterate schoolkids. They are not educated by a system or a school, they are 'educated' - or not - by teachers.

Andy Mcnabb in his book, “Today everything changes” gives a moving account of what a positive force military service can be to disadvantaged youth

Not sure about your comment, but free school milk was introduce after defeat in the Boer war, because the Zulu's were better nourished than the soldier of HM. Most lived in slums and were vitamin D deficient from lack of sunlight. Free school milk was introduced to provide calcium to make their bones stronger.

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.

You can’t blame the teachers in the blanket way you have. A child’s first and primary educator is/are the parent(s). Schools can only do so much.

like all things, the problem is more complex than a simplified sweeping statement allows. Without knowing the background to the cases we can’t say why the army made the decision they did but one assumes they had to justify it as part of the process.

This this really doesn't capture the essence of today's situation. Perhaps once it was true. However, in a world of mission command (well applied or not), great reliance is placed on individuals, frequently down to the lowest level, to apply thought to seize initiative and to create and exploit opportunities. This is not merely to follow orders, but is much more to pursue intent. This requires a considerable degree of understanding, achieved through very rigorous individual training and education, and collective training. All of these, to some extent, compensate for the poor effect of the education system on many of the people the Services employ. Arguably, if the education system worked a little better, we could spend less time and money on the training we have to and more on the training we'd like to.

I think too, that intellectuals and following orders are not mutually exclusive. I acknowledge that in your (probable) pursuit of a pithy point, you have allowed that inference even if it was (probably) not what you intended.

Different skill set required to carry the Mortar or a GPMG and 300 rounds!

Carry, probably. Operate, definitely!

In both WW's it was commented that the average educational standard of German Infantry was higher than the Brits - and it showed............. The German's were faster to react and less likely to require detailed supervision of all tasks

And still they lost.....

Viet Cong's performance not too shabby either.

CG

Poor strategy lost the Germans the war.

German tactical action in combat, on the other hand, was very good. Air power in the West and overwhelming numbers of Soviet forces in the East probably more than any other factors, were key to negating that.

Conversely, good strategy by the N Vietnamese; fight the war in the living rooms of every US household. Tactical action, not so goo; it's frequently said that the US never lost a tactical battle. Pity its strategy wasn't as good.

Last year at school, master addressed class,"You will be getting your call up papers soon, when you go in you will be recognised as officer material and some of the others will give you a hard time. Once you get through that, life will be much easier.". As a very shy and not very confident youngster, this did not encourage me. However, shortly after the government scrapped National Service, so I never went through the experience. Don't know if being a natural good shot would have made any difference! A lot of us wanted to be Spitfire pilots, though the machines were obsolete by then. The power of wartime reporting.

Haven’t we been here before?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...d-of-Army.html

One hopes that the new recruits will at least be able to read FRONT TOWARDS ENEMY and understand the need for the wording!

ambidextrous
 

Between 1962 to 1974, "Tommy's" were somewhat better educated, they must have been as they hired me.!

14th. November 1973 . Mark Phillips, known as "Foggie" by Anne's brothers married the lady in question.

P.S.:"Foggie's"commanding officer was heard to say "Lt.Phillips will go far in the Army because he's a Gentleman". Presumably at that period nothing further was required as an Officer!

Medium size militaries, like Canada and the UK have a growing problem with recruiting. The idea of the "strategic" corporal/leading seaman/leading aircrewman, is not just hyperbole anymore. We are expecting quite junior personnel to make real time decisions in very ambiguous battle spaces. Plus we are trying to leverage every member to the maximum so the luxury of assigning only a very small well defined to task to everyone to make life simpler for the individual, with multiple people required to accomplish the whole task is not realistic anymore. That and ubiquitous technology means that core competencies require the ability to read with understanding.

It is a perfect storm as the average recruit becomes less fit, less healthy, less mechanically competent, less use to having to make their own decisions, and less competent in basic reading and math; yet the demands and expectations placed on him or her only grow. In Canada we are starting to see a lot of pre course preparation training, which in many cases is basically an accelerated high school program minus the fluffy bits, in order to keep course pass rates for military coursing at an acceptable level.

Von Clausewitz lost Germany the war!

I'm slightly confused here. Why would you not want to pass your initials?