Combined Cadet Force
I still have a hard time explaining this to people who don't know what it is.
Essentially, kids are "voluntarily" put into this thing after school where they dress up in uniforms and berets and forced to do marching drills.
You then pick whether you want to do Army/Navy/RAF, and you get to do some shooting drills. Guns are brought into the school (without ammo) and kids are shown how to shoot.
Every year each group goes on a summer camp type excursion where they get to fire real weapons or fly gliders or something.
And that's it.
Lmao! Still, isn't it a bit weird? Not many schools do it over here, and it's seen as chivalric knighthood quiet patriotism thing, instead of a funnel for the armed forces.
Regular state school kids aren't told to go to the army until they're out of school
Well no, not many schools have a CCF branch because the CCF is specifically for private schools and focuses on a more general "officer training" than the normal cadet branches. There are plenty of regular navy cadet, army cadet and air cadet forces for the state school kids, doing much the same things.
What are the state school ones? Never heard of anything parallel to the CCF
It's just cadets, without the combined part. Army cadets, navy cadets, or RAF cadets. Which one you can join is dependent on which ones you're near, rather than getting a choice like in the CCF.
I think they mean regular army, air and sea cadet organisations that are separate to state school, but state school kids go to.