I love machine guns and dream of joining the secret services - says Olya, 12
IT'S a familiar scene across much of Britain.
As temperatures fall and the nights draw in, millions of children reluctantly trudge back to school today following their half-term break.
But while they settle down to lessons in maths and English, thousands of miles away in a Moscow classroom life could not be more different.
In her Russian state school, little Nastya Grechyshnikova has her first class of the day - how to strip down an AK-47 rifle.
Down the corridor, a class of 11-year-old girls with plaits and ponytails are learning how to handle grenades.
Lessons at First Russian Girls Cadet Boarding School Number Nine in Moscow
Bang on ... the girls get some target practice with pistols
Other equally demure girls - in dark blue military-style tunics with red epaulettes - are being taught how to goose-step.
This is Moscow's Girls Cadet Boarding School Number Nine - one of the new elite military academies in the Motherland.
Fresh from Russia's crushing military victory in neighbouring Georgia last year, prime minister Vladimir Putin hopes the academies will turn out model citizens for his resurgent nation.
Policeman's daughter Nastya, 11, is barely taller than her Kalashnikov rifle and proudly reveals: "I just finished learning how to strip down and put back together the AK-47.
"It's so heavy. I need to make my arms stronger and get more muscles to use it. I need two fingers to pull the trigger."
The girls - chosen after undergoing aptitude tests aimed at selecting leaders of the future - also learn first-aid, self-defence and how to tackle terrorists.
The rules here are strict. Nastya explains: "There are no short skirts and swear words, no smoking and drinking, and no walking about unattended."
We watch as Nastya then takes aim with a deadly Makarov pistol. "I want to be a customs officer when I grow up," she says. "I want to catch criminals. But I hope I won't need to hurt them with a gun.
"Some Second World War veterans came to see us recently. They were interested to see what we study and I heard what they remembered about that time.
Lessons at First Russian Girls Cadet Boarding School Number Nine in Moscow
Quick march ... on parade in the school gym
"The Germans didn't take mercy on anyone, on kids and women and elderly people. I don't want it to happen again."
The school's day begins at 7am with physical exercise and ends in the evening with the ironing of their army-style uniforms.
Make-up is banned, as are mobile phones - except for a few minutes each day when the boarding school pupils are allowed to talk to their parents.
Needless to say, their tales of the school day are far removed from those of British youngsters.
Nastya says, proudly: "I tell my parents which new guns I've learned about.
"And how you need to put together the Kalashnikov so that all the parts go in the right order and then how you do a control shot - the first shot after you put all the parts together - so nothing goes wrong."
Another pupil, 12-year-old Olya Offitserova, is typical of the young generation being groomed by these fiercely patriotic schools.
"I'm dreaming about going into the secret services," she says sternly.
"I like working with machine guns. I want to do something for the benefit of my Motherland like all of us here."
Well-spoken Olya adds: "At home, I see girls aged 11 putting on make-up and fishnets.
"Why do you need to do it? Why are they so obsessed with boys, when there are so many interesting things to learn?
"We do see boys here, very gallant and well-behaved ones. They don't pull your plaits like the boys in ordinary schools. They respect girls in uniform."
Lessons at First Russian Girls Cadet Boarding School Number Nine in MoscowLessons at First Russian Girls Cadet Boarding School Number Nine in Moscow
Military two-step ... rare chance to meet boys at a winter ball
Ukrainian-born Katya Aristovich, just 11, took time out of her hand-grenade class taught by reserve colonel Mikhail Mikkholaichuk, 50, a veteran of the Red Army's occupation of Afghanistan.
"I want to be a general," she tells us. "My favourite subject is The Basics of Military Service.
"I love marching and feel so proud when we are all together, shoulder to shoulder, like one organism. I'm ready to die for Russia." This angelic schoolgirl's words will send a shiver down the spine of Russia's enemies.
Russian cadet schools began in 1732 under Empress Anna, niece of Peter the Great.
Following the Communist years, the Putin era has seen the rebirth of the concept for boys - and now girls too.
The number nine in the school name is misleading - this was the first girl cadets academy. Another has opened and more will follow quickly.
Many of the children, like Putin, are from impoverished backgrounds.
They are taught intensively for six days a week in the usual school subjects and also how to sew and cook, sing and draw, fence and dance.
School Number Nine also promises to make the girls "faithful, loving wives and mothers". Academy director Viktoria Silenskaya says self-defence classes will help her girls avoid another outrage similar to the Beslan massacre in 2004 in which 334 people, mostly children, perished in a school siege.
"We want our girls to be able to defend themselves, to avoid such fears as children felt in Beslan, for example," she explained.
The rigid military-style discipline extends to the teaching staff too.
Yelena Alexandrovna Kalchenko, a "class dame" or teacher, insists: "At the end of each school year they must organise a performance to show what their pupils have learned. If the performance is not impressive, we part company with the teacher."
Yelena goes on: "Good manners must be our girls' default response. Wherever we go, our girls are seen as the best mannered and most modest.
"And they're the brightest too, as all our teachers go through very rigorous selection."
A traditional Russian Winter Ball gives the girls a rare chance to meet the opposite sex, in this case from a nearby male-only boarding school called Number Seven Moscow Cossacks Cadet Corps - another military-style academy founded in the Putin years.
Alyona Chuchelina, 16, who speaks five languages fluently and recently attained the rank of lance-corporal with a medal for her handling of the AK-47, says: "For big events like this you are allowed to wear make-up, but it's only a couple of times a year."
The girls scoff at suggestions there is a sinister element to their education. Anastasia Kutskevich, 17, whose mother runs a travel company, reveals: "Many people think we have been taken away from the real world.
"But I would say that compared with other girls, I have so many more freedoms. This school is about honesty and honour.
"I like my uniform and I love marching on the parade ground."
Sasha Zolina, 11, like many of the 300 or so cadets at the school, is from a military family - but insists the academy's intentions are peaceful.
"I would be ready to take part in a real war, like all of us here, we are well-trained," she says. "Real war is awful, it ruins lives and kills so many people.
"What we actually want is to stop the Third World War from happening. God save us from it."
The Sun goes inside a Russian military school for kids | The Sun |Features