House of Commons Hansard Debates for 25 Oct 1999 (pt 27)

8.52 pm

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Jacqui Smith): I thank the hon. Member for Colchester (Mr. Russell) for his kind words on my first appearance at the Dispatch Box. I also congratulate him on obtaining this important debate, and assure him that my Department is working closely with the Ministry of Defence on the issue.

The sons and daughters of service personnel are educated in three different settings: overseas, in UK independent schools and in UK state schools. I shall start with the first of those settings because it is important in the context of the education of service children.

Many children of service personnel are educated abroad at schools run by Service Children's Education, or the SCE, an executive agency of the Ministry of Defence. It is run largely along the lines of an English local education authority and operates in accordance with sound UK practice, including the delivery of the same national curriculum that applies in England and Wales. Its schools are supported by child guidance and careers guidance services. There are some 50 SCE schools in areas of the world where the British forces have significant numbers of personnel, such as Germany, Cyprus, Belize and the Falkland Islands.

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It is a measure of the success of SCE schools that their examination and assessment results would place them among the leading education authorities in the UK. Reports by the Office for Standards in Education, which provides an independent inspection service for the schools, have been consistently good over a number of years. The work of the schools is backed by SCE's own inspection advisory service, which provides extensive and varied training facilities to ensure that staff in schools are conversant with developments in the United Kingdom. It is worth noting that the SCE is also matching the Government's ambitious plans for the expansion of nursery education in the UK.

There will be occasions when service personnel are posted to locations where there are no SCE schools. In those situations, children can attend the UK boarding schools--either maintained or independent--that are on the Ministry of Defence's admissible schools list.

I understand that the hon. Member for Colchester is largely concerned with those children of service personnel based in the UK who are usually educated near where their mothers or fathers are based. As the hon. Gentleman pointed out, because of the nature of their parents' jobs these children may often have to change schools, sometimes at short notice. Our aim, and that of the Ministry of Defence, is to ensure that those children suffer as little disruption to their education as possible.

I deal now with the particular concerns that the hon. Gentleman expressed. I am very much aware of the effects that the movement of Army personnel into and out of his constituency will have on service children and on state schools. Clearly, that problem also affects other hon. Members' constituents.

There are about 185,000 service children in UK state schools. The movement of armed forces families can therefore have an impact on certain parts of the school system. The Government, together with those local education authorities with high concentrations of service children, have taken steps to minimise that impact.

I take this opportunity to welcome the establishment of the National Association of State Schools for Service Children. Although Ministers will not attend the association's conference, officials from my Department will be there and will listen carefully to the concerns expressed and recommendations made. In addition, I can assure the House that Ministers are adopting a joined-up approach to the range of issues affecting service families, including education. We are doing so through the joint ministerial services families task force, of which I am a member. I have already attended a meeting of that task force, and understand that one of its early concerns in connection with education had to do with admissions. The Government recognise the particular needs of service children in that regard, and we have made significant progress.

In March, my Department published its code of practice on school admissions. The paragraph entitled "Children of UK Service Personnel and other Crown Servants" states:

"These families are subject to frequent movement within the UK and from abroad, often at relatively short notice. LEAs and School Admission Authorities in those areas with a significant standing presence of Service Personnel should ensure that the needs of Service children are taken into account, by considering inviting the Service Children's Education authority to the Admissions Forum."

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"Any parent (except, temporarily, the parent of a child who has been permanently excluded from two schools and where at least one of the exclusions took place since 1 September 1997) who is refused a school place for which they have applied, has the right to appeal to an independent appeal panel. This right applies equally to parents returning from working abroad or subject to frequent movements within the UK, such as Service personnel and other Crown Servants."

The chief executive of the SCE wrote to the 12 local education authorities with the largest concentrations of service personnel in August this year to determine their progress in setting up admissions forums and in including the SCE's representatives as members.

Mr. Russell: The Department has recognised that 12 local education authorities have a particular interest in the education of children of service personnel. Does that mean that it will provide additional national resources for those 12 LEAs, as they have problems over and above those of other authorities?

Jacqui Smith: I was about to say that the chief executive has written in similar terms to a further eight LEAs, so it is not right to say that we can easily identify the LEAs. My Department's priority has been to encourage partnership between the SCE and the LEAs concerned. I shall touch on local funding later in my speech.

It may be helpful if I outline the background to current troop movements. Army personnel move in one of two ways--within formed units or as individuals. More than two thirds of moves are by individuals. Moves can take place at any time of year and must, of course, be subject to operational needs which, for a fighting force, must take priority. Having said that, the Army has in recent years attempted to concentrate such movements in school holidays, specifically the summer holidays. Service families want their children to complete whole years of schooling, and the Army is doing its best to meet that aspiration as far as is possible.

Certain units in the Army--the front-line units--move as formed units because that is how they fight. Those units, and their families, are based in a range of locations in the United Kingdom and abroad. Some of those locations are arduous, and units can be posted to them for only limited periods. The Army calls the process of rotating front-line units through locations the arms plot. Two factors drive the arms plot: the maximum amount of time that units can remain in an arduous environment, and the times of the year when they can be replaced. Most arms plot moves, like individual moves, take place in the summer holidays, again because the Army wants to reduce the impact of these moves on service children.

Two parachute battalions are being relocated from their long-established base at Aldershot to Colchester--the hon. Gentleman's constituency--as part of the strategic defence review. The Parachute Regiment will leave its home in Aldershot, where it has been since the second world war. Once in Colchester, it will form part of 16 Air Assault Brigade. However, space must be created to allow it to move to Colchester, which is why the Royal Gloucestershire, Berkshire and Wiltshire Regiment will move out in April 2000, followed shortly next summer by the First Battalion, the Royal Scots.

I hope that the hon. Gentleman can appreciate that important operational reasons have dictated the timing of moves out of his constituency, which is why they are

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taking place during the period of children's standard assessment tests. I assure him that we recognise the concern that that has caused, and that such moves are exceptional. Furthermore, where a parent is moved at that time, his or her spouse and children can remain in the accommodation for up to three months to enable SATs to be completed. For exams such as GCSE and A-levels, the period can be even longer. That displays the importance that the Ministry of Defence places on service children's education.

My Department and LEAs recognise the turbulence that such changes can create, which is why LEAs--I am pleased to say that Essex is included--provide extra resources for the schools affected. That may partly explain why, according to research about to be published by Janet Dobson on the effects of pupil mobility, which is partly funded by my Department, the levels of achievement of children in schools with large numbers of service children seem to compare favourably with children in other schools where there is unusually high mobility.

The research looked at only a sample of service children's schools, but it found that a high proportion of such children do better than other children with high mobility. That is testimony to the hard work of schools, and the involvement of service parents, in overcoming the difficulties of high mobility in order to help to achieve our aim of raising standards in all schools. I assure the hon. Member for Colchester that we intend to use the results of the research on mobility to help to guide future policies.

In relation to target setting, I want to mention briefly our proposals for raising school performance. The Government strongly believe that setting specific, measurable targets at least once a year for pupil performance is a powerful lever for raising standards in our schools. That view was supported in the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority consultation on target setting. Target setting should support school improvement and should not become a burdensome administrative procedure. Targets have to be set each autumn term. They must relate to those pupils who will take the national curriculum tests, GCSE examinations or equivalent towards the end of the following school year--

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that is, five terms later. Schools may want to augment those targets with others of their own choosing, to reflect their particular priorities. That may be especially important for state schools with high numbers of service children.

In addition, schools should discuss indicative targets for future years as part of their dialogue with LEAs within the education development plan process. We expect LEAs to take account of circumstances such as the mobility of children of service personnel when setting those targets. The introduction of performance targets in schools is sufficiently flexible to take account of individual circumstances.