Memorandum from the Governors of Bulford
Church of England School
INTRODUCTION
1. Bulford Church of England Voluntary Controlled
Primary School has a pupil population approximately half of which
are children of service personnel. The school takes great pride
in attempting to offer the very best primary education opportunity
to these children.
2. The Governing Body of the School is concerned
about the effect that movement of children of service personnel
into and out of the school has on the school's ability to deliver
the most effective education. Concerns and proposals follow.
CONCERNS
3. Teaching. There is a significantly
increased burden on teaching staff in adapting education to meet
the needs of both the group and the individual.
4. Performance Evaluation. The ability
of the school to assess individual and group performance through
time is significantly disrupted. Individual and School performance
assessments are greatly reduced in value, often to having no meaning
at all. The ability to make appropriate interventions in these
circumstances is much reduced. The value-added measure for the
school is extremely difficult to assess with any rigour.
5. Resource Allocation. The changing
numbers during the year can impact on extremely important resource
allocation matters. If the number of children on the school roll
on 20 January is below the number the school finds itself delivering
for, then the funding provided for the school is much reduced.
The existing funding arrangements are meagre.
6. Administration. There is a significantly
increased burden on administering the school. Many children arrive
with incomplete documentation, in some cases no documentation
at all.
7. Free School Meals. There is considerable
difficulty over the Service's inability to work with the Government
guidelines for free school meals.
PROPOSALS
8. Resources. It is proposed that
consideration be given to delivering significant additional resources
to United Kingdom based schools with numbers of children of service
personnel to assist with additional teaching (perhaps reducing
the number of children overall per class), performance evaluation
(perhaps additional software and training) and administration
(perhaps additional staff time and software).
9. Supporting Structure. It is proposed
that consideration be given to the creation of an additional supporting
structure for children of service families with strong links to
all the schools involved, predominantly a data and administrative
resource, to maintain performance records and administrative records.
This structure would also provide a single point of contact for
administrative matters such as documentation.
CONCLUSION
10. There are a number of Schools in the
United Kingdom which have a high proportion of children from service
personnel. The movement of these children into and out of the
schools has a significant impact on the ability of the schools
to deliver the most effective education. The impact places considerable
burden on teaching, performance evaluation and administration.
This Governing Body proposes that consideration is given to additional
resources for teaching, evaluation and administration in these
schools and a supporting structure for performance records and
documentation to support all schools with children from service
personnel. The provision of additional resources and the supporting
structure has the potential to bring the effectiveness of the
education provided to children of service personnel at least up
to the same standard as that provided to all children nationally.
The ability to maintain performance records will additionally
offer the possibility of evaluating the effectiveness of any investment
made in these proposals.
20 April 2006
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