National Cadets Week | 5–11 October
National Cadets Week provides an opportunity to celebrate what young people learn, achieve and contribute through their involvement in the Cadet Forces.
Too often, our understanding of cadets begins and ends with the uniform. Yet research led by Professor Simon Denny and colleagues demonstrates the wider educational and social value of cadet participation; identifying positive outcomes in areas including confidence, leadership, teamwork, resilience, education, employability and wellbeing.
The research undertaken in Scotland is particularly relevant. It connects the cadet experience with the four capacities at the heart of Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence: successful learners, confident individuals, responsible citizens and effective contributors. This provides an important way of thinking about cadet participation, as a form of experiential learning through which young people take responsibility, solve problems, work with others, volunteer, lead and respond to challenge.
These experiences can generate knowledge, skills and behaviours that extend well beyond cadet activities into education, employment and wider civic life.
The Denny research also highlights the potential value of these opportunities for young people experiencing disadvantage, including their contribution to social mobility and educational engagement. We should also recognise the adult volunteers and instructors whose commitment creates the environments in which young people can develop, participate and thrive.
National Cadets Week should therefore prompt us to ask some important questions. How do we better recognise the learning that takes place through cadet participation? How do we enable young people to articulate what they have learned and achieved? And how can schools, colleges, universities and employers ensure that these experiences are understood and valued?
This National Cadets Week, let’s look beyond the uniform and focus on the young person within it – what they are learning, what they are achieving and the contribution they are making to society today.
Listen to their voices. Understand their experiences. Recognise their learning. Value their contribution.