In a clear bid to instil more military-style discipline in England’s schools, the Tories would boost the funding of Skill Force, a charity that matches ex-servicemen with 14- to 19-year-olds in deprived areas.
The party is promising to expand the scheme five-fold, so that it enrols 1,000 instructors to support more than 40,000 young people. It says government funding for the scheme has been on the wane and is due to dry up completely at the end of the current financial year.
The policy of providing ex-servicemen as mentors attempts to tackle the rise in fixed-period exclusions in secondary schools. According to the Department for Children, Schools and Families, these surged from 75,230 in 2004 to 363,270 last year.
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