For the last three years the Department has funded Defence Schools Presentations Teams (DSPT) which tour secondary schools giving a half day interactive presentation about defence to 14 to 16-year-olds. There are five such teams covering different areas of the country, and over the last year they visited about 460 schools (about 10 per cent. of the total number in the country serving this age group). These presentations are generally well received and do allow us to get some of our messages over about the importance of defence. The investment here is about £2.1 million a year and we have reviewed our approach.
The Department will be introducing a new schools e-learning product. Through creating an educational website called “Defence Dynamics”, our main focus will be to provide Secondary School teachers of 14 to 16-year-olds with pre-packaged electronic lesson plans with Defence themes. Defence Dynamics will start with the delivery in September 2007 of 40 plus lesson plans with audio-visuals in Science, Maths and English based on scenarios that reflect the professional work of the MOD and the armed forces worldwide. The material will be developed to support the requirements of the school curriculum and across a range of subject areas in the longer term. MOD will be working closely with DfES and the devolved Government education Departments in the UK. Initially the Defence Dynamics programme will run for two years with the aim to develop this for the long-term. A similar e-learning approach has been used successfully in Australian schools for three years (“Defence 2020”).
The intention is to disband the touring DSPT in July 2007 (the end of this academic year) and launch the new schools e-learning product in September 2007. The Department will be maintaining its engagement with schools and switching to an approach that will enable us to reach many more children than are visited by the touring DSPT, and at a significantly lower cost.
The armed forces engagement with youth activities continues—each service of the armed forces has a presentation team and these remain in place. There is also a wide range of single service youth activity.