"He asked me about what I knew about the military services academy in schools; I said I'd heard about it, and he asked 'do you want one?' and I said 'yeah'," Kaua said.
Shelford said the idea behind setting up military academies in Whanganui and across the country was to provide students with an alternative path to education.
"Not just about mathematics and science and all those activities that you see at a college, but to be able to do military stuff at the same time.
"Marching, looking after yourself, things like that, learning to become leaders and taking charge of people."
Shelford said being in Whanganui was somewhat off the beaten track for him, but being at the march-out highlighted how far the students had come since starting the course and what the training had done for them.
"When you see the young ones coming through at a college, they're still young, like 16-17-year-olds, and they're all good kids," he said.
Doing a year or two years of a course like this changed the students' mindsets as well as opening their eyes to a larger world, he said.
"People forget that our Government has our military in 28 countries around the world at any one time."
This was the 13th year the academy had been operating at the school, and Kaua said it had been a valuable service to both the school and the students who had taken part in it over the years.
"Each year is different because you've got different kids coming but it's all the same because it's military," Kaua said.
"It's all about self-discipline, self-respect, typical military protocols and that's the way it eventuated."
If the students chose to go into the military after completing the course, Shelford said although they had to go through similar training again, the course gave them an upper hand as they knew what to expect from the course.
Kaua said around a quarter to a third of the students who completed the Academy course enlisted with the military, while most of the students achieved NCEA level 2 qualifications and, consequently, got jobs.
