Wherever you are in the world, someone’s keeping watch. But what if you want to become one of the watchers? Tim Cumming gumshoes around the secretive world of spy schools around the globe

Nations have been playing I-spy on each other since the first borders went up at the beginning of time (or at least since Roman times, when eavesdroppers named the Frumentarii spanned the entire empire, yet with their mouths always close to the ear of the emperor).

Centuries later, the known unknowns never change – we still want to see what’s going on over the fence, at the window, and under our feet and we’ve devised plenty of ways of finding out.

At GCHQ, they have used Xbox live gaming data to target prospective employees

In Red Sparrow, the new espionage thriller starring Jennifer Lawrence as a prima ballerina turned Russian agent, she gets her training under a decidedly stern Matron (Charlotte Rampling) at Sparrow School, learning to use her body and mind as deadly weapons.

Adapted from the bestselling novel of the same name by former CIA operative Jason Matthews, the film’s action encompasses some of the deadly tradecraft of modern-day spies.

But what are the real-life equivalents of Sparrow School in the world’s most powerful nations? Here we part the curtain to discover how the adepts of the spy world learn their trade…

UK: Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and GCHQ

Bond author Ian Fleming may well have worked in an early version of MI6, but its real work has little in common with the world Fleming created for 007.

Today, counterterrorism has superseded other espionage challenges. There were just 30 MI6 agents working on counterterrorism on 11 September 2001. That changed fast.

Underground missions: MI6 is a far cry from the world of 007 Credit: Getty

A major recruitment blitz – including job ads in newspapers – meant that upper middle class privilege and an Oxbridge education were no longer a prerequisite. Gaming, however, is. At GCHQ, they have used Xbox live gaming data to target prospective employees.

If you tick the right boxes – depending on how you do in your gaming missions – you’ll find yourself targeted by in-game adverts only you can see. The rest is for your eyes only.

US: The CIA

Langley, Virginia – the setting for spy drama Homeland (as well as Seth McFarlane’s riotous American Dad!) – has a population of around 150,000 law-abiding citizens. A good few of them, however, abide less than others, being in the espionage business and not quite the neighbours you thought they were.

The Katsa are infamous for their skilful ruthlessness

When it comes to training, you’ll need to be a graduate to get in the door, aged over 18, drug free for at least a year, and from a scientific, engineering or business background – and a foreign language is useful.

The training at Langley will push you hard when it comes to handling mental stress – whether that’s sleep deprivation or focusing in the face of extreme danger, fatigue and discomfort.

There are courses in handling firearms and hand-to-hand fighting, then what they call “more clandestine series training” which lasts a year. Once completed, you’ll find yourself overseas in “unstructured operations” – their words.

China: The Ministry of State Security (MSS)

China’s MSS based its structure on the Soviets’ KGB, while expanding its pool of spies to include ordinary businesspeople, journalists, professionals and diplomats, sent around the world to collate information to be sent back to HQ.

For the MSS, pretty much anyone can be an intelligence asset, but schooling is still required – and there are at least eight National Intelligence colleges spread through China.

All the intelligence in the world cannot eliminate every blind spot

Like many Western intelligence agencies, it aims to produce spies whose tradecraft is not a swift karate kick but deep data collection and analysis.

Which means intensive training in computer science, law, management and more before beginning proper intelligence work. “There’s nothing for the West to worry about – we’re just trying to provide the right sort of skills for our requirements,” an intelligence spokesperson said, gently. That’s a relief, then.

Israel: The Mossad

The Mossad is in the premiere league of international spy agencies, but it does adopt a friendly tone on its website. “All are welcome, regardless of religion, nationality or occupation,” it says, “to work with us or be involved in activity that could bring great personal benefit and a chance to make a difference.”

Traditionally, the Mossad’s recruits are thought to have come from the Israeli army service. From capturing Nazi war criminals to the agency’s monitoring of the geopolitical magma spewing from a volatile Middle East today, its operatives, the Katsa, are infamous for their skilful ruthlessness.

Remarkably, there may only be around 50 of them operating in Europe and the Middle East.

Training is at the Midrasha, near the town of Herzliya. You’ll get here once you pass a range of psychological and aptitude tests, spending three years mastering tradecraft, from cultivating agents to methods of killing to avoiding surveillance by foreign agents. Then you’ll be ready.

India’s RAW and Pakistan’s ISI

India’s secret service, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), occupies itself with neighbouring Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh.

Recruits, plucked largely from university and the armed forces, are channelled through the Research and Analysis Service (RAS) before a 10-day regimen of training in all kinds of tradecraft and analytics, and a further two years in the field, mastering the clandestine arts of infiltration, exfiltration, interrogation, self-defence and how to establish an undercover identity in the real world.

Meanwhile, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is often described as a state within a state that protects the military from domestic opposition.

More murkily, it stands accused of fighting Islamist terror at home while promulgating it abroad, especially India.

Training at the Defence Services intelligence Academy in Islamabad lasts for six months, and though all ranks above major are reserved for military personnel, civilians can try their arm at the basics of espionage via regular job advertisements.

Germany, France and the EU

A European intelligence agency doesn’t yet exist – Germany is anti, France is pro – but there is the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Centre (ESISC), for which you can intern in Brussels, as you master the collation and analysis of multiple sources of intelligence – security, crime, politics, economics.

While France trembles in a web of no less than six spy agencies, its Groupe d'intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale (GIGN) are the kind of robo-cops you’d see in operation and on the ground.

A good deal of their intensive training is in the field, and very hands-on, and while they’re armed to the teeth and tough as leather, even they admit that all the intelligence in the world cannot eliminate every blind spot.

In the meantime, the website for Germany’s domestic spy agency, Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), welcomes visitors and carefully details its focus on the domestic issues of terror and extremism.

To find out more, you could apply to enter its Academy located deep in the leafy countryside west of Bonn. There is, oddly, no Google Street View of the area. Approach at your own risk….

Red Sparrow

Based on the novel by former CIA operative Jason Matthews, Red Sparrow is a high-octane spy thriller starring Jennifer Lawrence as the eponymous Sparrow – a Russian ballerina turned elite agent who must find the mole that has infiltrated their secret service.

Directed by Francis Lawrence (Hunger Games, I am Legend) the film boasts an incredible cast including Joel Edgerton, Jeremy Irons, Charlotte Rampling and Joely Richardson, and a crackling script by screenwriter Justin Haythe that's intelligent, gripping and unpredictable.

Red Sparrow is in cinemas & IMAX UK-wide now.