Combined Cadet Force

The Combined Cadet Force (CCF) is a youth organisation in the United Kingdom, sponsored by the Ministry of Defence (MOD), which operates in secondary schools, sub divided into Royal Navy, Royal Marines, Army and Royal Air Force sections. Its aim is to "provide a disciplined organisation in a school so that pupils may develop powers of leadership by means of training to promote the qualities of responsibility, self reliance, resourcefulness, endurance and perseverance".

One of its objectives is "to encourage those who have an interest in the services to become Officers of the Regular or Reserve Forces", and a significant number of British military officers have had experience in the CCF.

Before 1948, cadet forces in schools existed as the junior division of the Officers' Training Corps framework, but in 1948 Combined Cadet Force was formed covering cadets affiliated to all three services. As of 2019, there were 42,720 cadets and 3,370 Adult Volunteers. The MOD provides approximately £28 million per year of funding to the CCF. Each school's unit is known as a Contingent, and there were approximately 500 in the UK in 2021.

Although sponsored by the Ministry of Defence, the CCF is not part of the British Armed Forces or Reserve Forces; as such, cadets and adult cadet leaders are not military personnel and therefore not subject to military law or subject to military 'call up'. Some cadets do, however, go on to join the armed forces later in life, and many of the organisation's leaders have been cadets or have a military background.

On 12 May 1859, the Secretary of State for War, Jonathan Peel, sent out a circular letter to the public schools and universities inviting them to form units of the Volunteer Corps. The first school cadet corps was established at Rossall School in February 1860, initially as an army contingent only. Felsted already had an armed drill contingent at the time of the War Office letter under the command of Sgt. Major Rogers RM; its claim on these grounds to be the oldest school corps was upheld by Field Marshal Earl Roberts in a letter to the Headmaster of 1904. In February 1861 the Oxford City Rifle Cadet Corps was founded, with five companies, the first of which was composed of pupils of the Linden House School, a private school in Headington, and the second composed of pupils from Magdalen College School. In 1908, the units were re-titled the Officer Training Corps (OTC).

The CCF was created in 1948 by the amalgamation of the Junior Training Corps (formerly the Junior Division of the Officers Training Corps) and the school contingents of the Sea Cadet Corps and Air Training Corps. CCFs are still occasionally referred to as "The Corps". A school contingent may have any combination of Royal Navy, Army, Royal Air Force and sometimes Royal Marines sections; the army section is invariably the largest.

The CCF movement used to be dominated by the independent sector with 200 contingents being based in independent schools with only around 60 in state schools. Since the Cadet Expansion Programme was launched in 2012 the number of contingents has reached 500, beating the target set by the government. There are now more contingents in the state sector than in the independent sector. The expansion was funded by £50m from the fines arising from the LIBOR scandal.

It was reported in 2008 that some independent school CCF detachments would be opened to pupils of local state schools One case of a fee-charging school allowing state school pupils to join the cadet force was Aldenham School in Watford, Hertfordshire linking its Cadet Force with the nearby state school Queens' School to form a joint Cadet force.