For the last three years the Department has funded the Defence Schools Presentation Teams (DSPT) which tour secondary schools giving a half day interactive presentation on defence issues to 14 to 16-year-olds. There are five such teams covering different areas of the country, and during 2006 they booked over 490 visits including Comprehensive, Grammar, Independent, single sex, and Faith Schools (Church of England, Catholic, and Muslim). These presentations are extremely well received and do allow us to get our messages over about the importance of defence. Almost all schools ask for a repeat visit the following year which has lead to a yearly increase in presentations. Civilian and military staff are seen as excellent role models and there are consequently significant benefits for future recruiting. The actual investment in the Defence Schools Presentation Teams has been about £1.9 million per year. I have placed in the Library of the House a chart detailing the tasking of the five teams during 2006. Those serials which have been crossed out indicate a cancellation by the school prior to the event.
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 for GCSE exams with Defence themes. It has been planned as a ten year programme. Defence Dynamics will start with the delivery in September 2007 of 40+ 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. An e-learning approach has been used successfully in Australian schools since 2002.
The intention is to disband the touring Defence Schools Presentation Teams in July 2007 (the end of this academic year) and launch the new schools e-learning product in September 2007. The Department will, through this 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 Defence Presentation Schools Teams, and at a significantly lower cost (£200,000 pa).