The 16-year-olds paid £1,500 a month at the Army’s war school
HARROGATE – “Before, I was sitting around on my PS5, or going out with my friends and trying to enjoy life. It was quite boring actually. But now I get to roll around in mud with a rifle in my hand. It’s proper good.”
Katie Cridge is one of around 1,700 teenagers who join the Army Foundation College (AFC) in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, each year.
The UK is the only military in Europe still to permit under-18s, though they can’t be deployed until they are adults, and Harrogate is the only site specifically for the training of teenage recruits.
Many have struggled in conventional education, with nearly 30 per cent of AFC’s intake in 2019 having been excluded. Katie didn’t enjoy school and moved up from her family home in London in September to join the college after finishing secondary school.
“I was quite a lazy person,” the 17-year-old admitted. “I didn’t really do a lot, but I’ve definitely grown up a lot. I’ve learned skills that I wouldn’t have the opportunity to do outside of here.” The teen was convinced to join after she visited during an open day, and thought the recruits – known as junior soldiers – “looked so proud of themselves and so happy”.
She added: “I just thought, yeah, that’s what I want to be like. I don’t want to be at home, doing nothing. I just want to be out there doing something.”
Junior soldiers live on site in 12-person dormitories and are paid £1,200 to £1,500 per month, plus funded tickets to travel home.
The course teaches the same content as the Army’s adult basic training course but over a longer time period – a 44-week long course or a 20-week short one, depending on the unit they are hoping to join – rather than the 13 weeks given to standard 18-year-old recruits. After leaving, graduates complete more training for a specific trade within the Army, such as artillery, logistics or engineering.
A recruit’s day starts with morning routine, when they put on uniform, clean their barracks and prepare for an inspection. Training begins at 8.30am, with dinner from around 5.15pm until 6.45pm. Then, recruits can join in sports or use the wellbeing site, which is kitted out with a pool table, darts boards, TVs and gaming computers.
The college has its quirks; junior soldiers must salute any portraits of the King, even when wandering alone down a corridor, and march around the college at all times, even in hoodies and jeans at weekends.
As well as military training, those who have failed their GCSEs must take English and maths lessons, generally in classes of fewer than 10 students, compared to the 30 found in most state schools. The centre also provides education focused on character development, such as resilience and ethics, and information literacy for all students.
‘Treated with respect for the first time in their lives’
AFC’s intake comes disproportionately from a lower socioeconomic background, with recruits up to twice as likely to originate from the lowest wage-earning quarter of local authorities than the top quarter. Around 9 per cent of recruits are female.
The Army is one of few major employers to accept recruits with no formal qualifications, permitting entrants from Entry Level 2, which is equivalent to a seven-year-old reading standard.
Many AFC students come from “really deprived backgrounds, from really dysfunctional families, who have had some awful childhood experiences” and find the uniform and discipline a leveller, according to the most senior soldier at the site, according to Regimental Sergeant Major Ben Townley.
“It’s almost like a clean slate, a fresh start for everybody,” said Townley, who joined the military at 16. “We understand their backgrounds, and we make sure that we allow for extra support, or more pastoral care or wellbeing support for individuals that need it.
“But actually, day to day, they’re all treated with the same level of respect. And for some youngsters, they might never have had that before.”
The college contributes about 20 per cent of the Army’s annual intake, but former students make up around 50 per cent of warrant officers class 1, the most senior soldier rank in the Army – something Townley says tells a “powerful story” about the calibre and commitment of its graduates.
Ruby Hammond, 17 – who moved to the college from Essex despite her mother’s concerns about her safety and time away from home – said it felt “like there’s no difference between people”.
She added: “Everyone here comes from different backgrounds, and then you’re all put in one place, doing the same training, same uniform. It feels [very] different compared to school. I think [people back home] think it’s not real, like I couldn’t really do it. Back then, I was a bit dumb in school. Now they’re thinking like, oh, I’m doing stuff with a rifle, that’s quite cool.”
Ruby has become her room’s hairdresser. “I do everyone’s hair, I do people’s eyebrows,” she laughed. “It’s like a massive girly sleepover.”
Her dream is to return to Harrogate as an instructor, to be a role model to the next generation of junior soldiers. “No one else really does this in my area. I’ve never heard of anyone joining the Army. They just went to a normal college, and I just think that’s quite boring.”
Gen Z has a reputation for being disengaged with defence, with polling indicating that only 11 per cent would fight for their country. Last year, a survey ranked the Armed Forces alongside fast food and delivery firms as the least attractive places for Generation Z to work.
The UK is in the process of developing a military gap year to encourage more youngsters into the forces and equip them with life skills, with details revealed exclusively by The i Paper last month. But Harrogate is consistently oversubscribed.
Townley said that teenagers today “get a really bad name”, with perceptions that they are “the Playstation generation” or spend all their time on screens, but “I see the exact opposite. I see young people here excited to be out and engaging with people socially, working hard and wanting a career in the army, proud of the country. I see and I read and I hear about this stuff [teenagers], and I’m just glad I worked somewhere like this, where I can see the evidence in front of my eyes.”
Ruby said seeing conflict around the world made her want to “train hard”, adding: “Just in case I do get called, I’d want to serve the country and do my best.”
From rifle training to GCSE maths
As well as offering a vocation, Harrogate helps “reset” the relationship the junior soldiers have with education, Townley said.
This has been the case for 17-year-old Olly Strong, who grew up in South Wales working part time on a family farm. He describes his pre-Army self as “lazy”, saying he found school uninspiring and used to spend his time “out with my mates, messing about”.
Olly is retaking maths and English GCSEs and says he no longer dreads studying, and has found the routine and discipline “sets you straight”. But his favourite part of the course is the exercises, where the soldiers undertake drills and mock operations.
“It gives you a taste of real soldiering. Your whole team just comes together [behind] the same goal to be the best. That’s what it’s about,” he said. “I want to do something for myself. Why wouldn’t you just want to get out and do something amazing with your life?”
Richard Sheriff, CEO of Red Kite Learning Trust, which runs 16 schools in Yorkshire and works closely with the college, says it has provided a lifeline to students otherwise struggling in mainstream education.
AFC can offer a safe place to live, food and a “sense of belonging”- something that dramatically affects children’s development but is out of the control of most mainstream schools, Sheriff said. It can also manage access to social media and phones, and prevent the use of drugs and alcohol.
The college is “not about square bashing, being shouted at, controlled and fed meagre rations” but “education, care, support and belonging in an environment that protects and nurtures personal growth”, added Sheriff.
“I have had the privilege of handing out certificates for achievement in maths and English that some of the young people never thought they were capable of. I have stood and seen them proudly pass out on the parade ground in front of an army of family and friends from across the UK. Many in education talk about tackling disadvantage, the college has been doing this with great success for many years.”
This is backed by research from the Learning and Work Institute shared exclusively with The i Paper, which found that 74 per cent of junior soldiers felt the college helped them to access better educational or learning opportunities. More than a third of the 2021 cohort gained at least one qualification during their time at the college.
An unpublished independent report by Oxford Economics found that attending AFC led to an increase in lifetime earnings of £35.7m for the average cohort of trainees, compared to £25.2m for the typical level of upskilling undertaken by an equivalent group of average 16- to 18-year-olds in England.
Violence, racism and sexual assault allegations
The college is not without controversy. It struggles with diversity, with an overwhelmingly male intake and just 4 per cent of recruits coming from ethnic minority backgrounds.
It has been linked to a string of sexual assault allegations against both recruits and teachers, allegations of violence by staff, racism, and at least one attempted suicide in recent years.
Evidence submitted to Parliament by the Child Rights International Network (CRIN) said that in 2021, 22 recruits were victims of sexual offences at the college, while a recruit survey in 2020 found that 48 per cent of girls had experienced bullying, harassment, or discrimination there.
Parents whose children have complained of mistreatment at the college, and CRIN, have called for it to be closed down.
But it has been ranked “outstanding” by schools inspector Ofsted, in an assessment that included welfare.
Louise Sandher-Jones, Minister for Veterans and People and an Army veteran, said that “unacceptable and criminal behaviour has no place in our Armed Forces”.
She noted that the Government’s new Armed Forces Bill delivers stronger measures to support and protect victims of serious and sexual offences, including an independent Tri-Service Complaints Unit, a “pioneering prevention programme” launched in November to address the cultural and behavioural root causes of unacceptable sexual behaviour in the military.
Students who spoke to The i Paper – lined up by the Ministry of Defence – acknowledged the disciplinary issues but said they felt supported to raise complaints. “I remember back in my first six weeks, there was a boy that wasn’t saying nice things, and literally, two days later they were gone, they were discharged,” Cridge said.
“I would say, in the first six weeks, obviously you have people like that, but they plough down on it really quickly. And if you are getting bullied or if you’re not happy, they have so many different people that you can go to.”
The site’s top soldier, Townley, admits that “when you take 1,300 16- or 17-year-olds, from all these different parts of the country, from different backgrounds and cultures and religions, males and females, and you put them all together, it’s tough.”
Harrogate’s management disputes the idea that bad behaviour is taught or accepted. “We can’t instantly expect them to walk through the gate and reset… bad behaviours they’ve learned throughout their young lives,” Townley said. “There are going to be scenarios, like there would in any organisation where 16 or 17-year-olds are together, because they’re still young.”
The college has a “duty to the taxpayer” as well as to recruits, he added, and “if they’re not willing to try the hardest and correct any sort of behaviours they might have learned before they came here, then usually it will result in them being asked to leave”.
Townley said the college held its students to higher standards than other institutions, and was responsible for them 24/7, rather than just during school hours. “A young lad wolf-whistling out the window at a girl walking past: we treat that quite seriously, because that’s not the expected behaviours of soldiers in the British Army,” he added.
Any criminal allegations are handed to North Yorkshire Police. If the incident is dropped, it is still reviewed by the military police to meet the Army’s internal standards. “But for the behaviours that we think we can correct and retrain on what best looks like, then we take real pride in correcting the behaviours and re-educating youngsters,” said Townley.
Your next read
Personal development, character and behaviour is the focus of the college. “We’re not bringing people into the Army at 16 years old and quick turnaround, train them and send them off to war. It just doesn’t happen,” Townley said.
“Our priority here isn’t actually the soldiering side of it. The focus for us is that character development, where the young soldiers start to behave like young adults, and they know what right looks like, and they’re better human beings. And that, to me, is the best thing about Harrogate.”
