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Royal Recruit Joins Army Basic Skills Partnership31 March 2006
Basic Skills Agency Director, Alan Wells OBE, accompanied The Princess on the visit and was delighted with what he saw, ‘This project has seen Army support for basic skills learners come on leaps and bounds. There is a big scale of need in the Army but it is being addressed. The 33 Army Education Centres and six initial training units, all with their own specialist Basic Skills tutors provides an impressive infrastructure for organising and delivering the Army’s literacy, language and numeracy provision – across the UK and overseas. I’m pleased that we have been able to extend our Army project to 2008, with a permanent member of Basic Skills Agency staff continuing to be seconded to the Army.’ The Princess’s afternoon tour began with a visit to the Gurkha Language Wing where she met with members of permanent Gurkha staff who have been responsible for the delivery of English language provision to Gurkha recruits and soldiers since 2000. As well as providing language tuition for non-native English speakers, the Army is also concerned with addressing the literacy and numeracy needs of soldiers whose skills are below the necessary level. Up to 50% of new soldier recruits enter training with literacy or numeracy skills at or below levels expected of an 11 year-old. The second part of The Princess’s tour showed this kind of support in action and took her to an Army Education Centre to meet with soldiers on a Level 1 literacy course. Having spoken with the soldiers The Princess was escorted around the Army Learning Centre to see how basic skills provision is being delivered within the Army through e-learning. The Army links up with local colleges around the country to meet the needs of the new recruits and soldiers. In 1999, HRH The Prince of Wales opened a satellite site of Darlington College at Catterick Garrison. Darlington College provides two full-time, specialist Basic Skills Tutors to work as part of the Army organisation at Catterick Garrison as well as delivering a range of basic skills programmes to soldiers through its own tutoring staff. The Princess was interested to meet with the college Principal, Sarah Robinson, and to speak with soldiers attending literacy and numeracy programmes there. Her Royal Highness ended the day with refreshments at the Vickery Club, a café and venue for off-duty recruits, opened by the previous Princess Royal in 1944. Brigadier Brister said, ‘It was a pleasure to welcome Her Royal Highness to Catterick to show her the strength of the Army’s commitment to meeting the basic skills needs of its soldiers and the scale of the basic skills challenge it faces. Tackling these basic skills difficulties head on and effectively leads to more confident, responsive and thinking individuals – individuals that are better prepared to meet the many and varied demands of modern-day soldiering’. For further information please contact Valerie McBurney or Ruth Yarnit at the Basic Skills Agency Press Office, telephone: 020 7440 7788, mobile: 07979 240936, email: valeriem@basic-skills.co.uk or ruthy@basic-skills.co.uk
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Basic Skills
On 30th March 2006, Basic Skills Agency Patron, HRH The Princess Royal was welcomed by Brigadier Brister to Catterick Garrison to meet with Army personnel, tutors and learners involved in Army basic skills training programmes. The visit acknowledged the progress made in Army training as a result of a 5-year partnership between the Army and the Basic Skills Agency.
