Officers' Training Corps

The Officers' Training Corps (OTC), more fully called the University Officers' Training Corps (UOTC), are leadership training units similar to a university club but operated by the British Army. Their focus is to develop the leadership abilities of their members whilst giving them an opportunity to take part in military life whilst at university. UOTC units are not deployable units and their members are not considered 'trained soldiers' and thus cannot be mobilised for active service. The majority of members of the UOTC do not go on to serve in the regular or reserve forces.

The emergence of the OTC as a distinct unit began in 1906, when the Secretary of State for War, Lord Haldane, first appointed a committee to consider the problem of the shortage of officers in the Militia, the Volunteer Force, the Yeomanry, and the Reserve of Officers. The committee recommended that an Officers' Training Corps be formed. The Corps was to be in two divisions: a junior division in public schools and a senior division in the universities.

In October 1908, therefore, authorised by Army Order 160 of July 1908, as part the Haldane Reforms of the Reserve forces, the contingents were formally established as the Officers' Training Corps and incorporated into the new Territorial Force, which was created by the Territorial and Reserve Forces Act 1907.

Oxford UOTC claims descent from the bodyguard to Charles I that students of the University of Oxford formed in 1642, during the English Civil War. But the immediate origin of the present body is the 1st Oxfordshire (Oxford University) Rifle Volunteer Corps, formed in 1859 and established (together with many other volunteer corps across the country) in response to the threat of war with France. From 1881, the OURVC served as one of several volunteer battalions of the Oxfordshire Light Infantry and in 1887 it became known as the 1st (Oxford University) Volunteer Battalion or the Oxford University Volunteers (OUV). The OUOTC was then was one of 23 such bodies formed at universities in Great Britain following the establishment of the Officers' Training Corps by Royal Warrant in 1908.

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