Defence Committee - Minutes of EvidenceHC 586

Back to Report

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Defence Committee

on Tuesday 23 April 2013

Members present:

Mr James Arbuthnot (Chair)

Mr Dai Havard

Mr Adam Holloway

Mrs Madeleine Moon

Penny Mordaunt

Sandra Osborne

Sir Bob Russell

Ms Gisela Stuart

________________

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Rt Hon Mark Francois MP, Minister of State for Defence, Personnel, Welfare and Veterans, Lieutenant General Berragan CB, Adjutant General and Mr Martin Bull, Department for Education gave evidence.

Chair: Welcome. Thank you very much for coming to give evidence on the Armed Forces Covenant in action. The first subject is educating the children of Service personnel, and then we will move on to the second inquiry. Minister, this cannot be the first time that you have given evidence in front of this Committee-or is it?

Mr Francois: I believe it is, Chair, yes.

Q438 Chair: Well, you are most welcome. We had some private briefing from you beforehand, but we welcome you to this session to give evidence. Would you care to introduce your team?

Mr Francois: Thank you very much, Chairman. On my left is Lieutenant General Berragan, the Adjutant General, and to his left is Mr Martin Bull from the Department for Education. To my right is Mr Gavin Barlow, the Director of Service Personnel Policy.

Q439 Chair: Thank you. You will be aware that we had a good evidence session last week. One of the issues that we raised was this: the Armed Forces Covenant says that the children of Service personnel should receive the same standard of and access to education as any other UK citizen in the area in which they live. Do you believe that they do?

Mr Francois: I think broadly they do, Chair. We said in the Armed Forces Covenant annual report, the first of which, as you know, was published in December last year, that we were reviewing the impact of the measures we have taken so far, including changes to the school admissions code and to the Service Pupil Premium. We think we have made good progress in these areas, but we know there is more work to be done.

I think it is fair to point out that Service children broadly do better than the national average and by and large they get good GCSE results. We know that other factors come into play that have an impact on Service children, including challenges with mobility, admissions and curriculum continuity, and I noticed from the transcript of last week’s evidence session that all of those factors cropped up; but that is why we have the commitment in the covenant to do our best for Service personnel and their families, and we think those children are broadly getting an education that is comparable to, or in some cases even better than, that received by their civilian counterparts.

Q440 Chair: But Ofsted have told us that for the first time their inspectors judged the standard of education in an SCE school to be inadequate. What are you doing about that?

Mr Francois: Are you referring to Haig school?

Chair: Yes.

Mr Francois: That is the one that springs to mind. In fact, we have done quite a lot about that in short order, but perhaps I can ask the Adjutant General to give you a briefing on that.

Lieutenant General Berragan: It is my responsibility. Service Children’s Education reports to me as the Adjutant General-I run, on behalf of the MOD, Service Children’s Education.

You are right to say that the school was found to be unsatisfactory in a report last year. Since then, in January this year, they have had a monitoring report from HMI Ofsted, which noticed an improvement in education at Haig school. It is very clear to Ofsted that improving the education is the highest priority in the school, and they have said that the speed at which the issues that they identified have been addressed is laudable.

The head teacher at the time of the inspection has now left and has been replaced by an outstanding and experienced teacher from another school within SCE whom Ofsted rate as outstanding as a head teacher, so we have put in one of our most talented head teachers. As well as that, we have established a bespoke executive committee to support and challenge the school in making the improvements it needs. Additionally, a primary consultant has been appointed to the school to work alongside the teachers to deliver the improvements needed and to monitor the children’s progress reports.

Haig will remain a priority until such time as HMI judges the school to no longer require of additional measures. It is important to note, however, that as-

Q441 Chair: Surely it will be longer than that, because you would like to get it as good as possible? Merely adequate would not be good enough.

Lieutenant General Berragan: Absolutely, but under special measures it will obviously get the attention it needs.

SCE continues to have a higher proportion of good schools than the national average, at 47% versus 46%, and of outstanding schools, at 25% versus 16%. In terms of inadequate schools, SCE has 3%, whereas the national figure is 6%. We are very proud of our SCE schools and we take action wherever we see something like this happening. I can assure you that that is work in progress.

Q442 Chair: It would be quite wrong of the Committee to concentrate only on the failures, so to the extent that I have contributed to that, I apologise. Nevertheless, parents said in an online survey we did as part of the Committee process that the schools are a mixed bag. What do you say about that and how would you try to bring the lower-performing schools up to the uppermost?

Mr Francois: May I take that first, Chairman, then I will ask the AG to come in? When I said that in some cases, Service children get perhaps a better education than some of their civilian counterparts, I was partly basing that on the fact that the number of our schools that are rated outstanding is higher than the national average. I also take your point that you do not want to focus excessively on one school, but with regard to the one we were just talking about, all of us as constituency MPs will know from our own patch that if you have a school with a particular problem like this, it is important not to let it run but to address it with some energy quickly. I believe that in this particular example, that is exactly what has been done. So where we have had problems at the lower end of the scale, as it were, it is fair to say that we have attempted to intervene and sort them out, and it is also fair to point out that we have had some success at the top end of the scale too. The AG may want to amplify that.

Lieutenant General Berragan: SCE has a system in place for sharing best practice among these schools and for developing continuous improvement, and an ethos of continuous improvement across the board to raise the level of the lower-performing schools-the more patchy schools. However, what they have also done is secure places at the National College for School Leadership, where they are sending some of their key middle and senior managers and school leaders, to develop them and raise standards across the whole organisation. Additionally, as we draw down from Germany, we are managing those people across the schools, so that as we close a school in one place, we are keeping hold of our best teachers in the schools that are remaining open until the back end of the Germany draw-down.

Q443 Chair: Thank you. Overall, there has been a good performance from the schools that educate Armed Forces families. Is it possible to say that these schools contain a very high proportion of people whose parents are in work-in disciplined, really valued work-across the country, so we would expect a high degree of performance? Is it fair to say that maybe you could get the performance up even more?

Mr Francois: On a wider philosophical point, Chair, to chance my arm slightly, I think that children across the country deserve a good education even if their parents are not in work and even if they come from very difficult backgrounds. I am not taking you on, Chairman, but I think that all children from all backgrounds deserve a decent start in life, and I believe that education is a very important part of that. That said, you point out fairly that we have a number of Service children who come from good backgrounds; clearly that helps them and, in some ways, makes the teachers’ jobs a bit easier, but we do not want to be complacent about that in any way. We are looking to continually improve the schools we run along the lines that the Adjutant General outlined.

Chair: Okay, fair enough.

Q444 Sir Bob Russell: Minister, you will be aware that the Prime Minister has said that the Armed Forces Covenant is enshrined in law. As somebody who served on the Armed Forces Bill Committee, I think there is agreement across the House that all of us need to do what we can to ensure that what is said in words is delivered in practical terms. With that in mind, how can the Government meet the obligations of the Armed Forces Covenant, when mobility makes it so difficult for parents to get their children into the school of their choice?

Mr Francois: The first thing to say is that, as you know, I served on the same Committee, and without puffing ourselves up too much, I think we can be proud that we contributed to the process of enshrining the key principles of the Armed Forces Covenant in law. I am not playing up to you, Chairman, just because you served on it too.

If I could just make a few general comments about disadvantage and mobility, as you know, one of the key principles of the covenant is "no disadvantage." If you go back a few years-I know this anecdotally from speaking to friends of mine in the Services-there was definitely a problem. When a unit moved from one area to another, if they moved mid-year, a lot of the good school places were taken up, and perhaps some years ago we did not give those Service personnel and their families as much support in finding a school place as we could have done. To some degree, the parents were left to sort it out for themselves. I do not believe that that is now the case at all.

When a large unit move is coming up, we plan that quite a way in advance. We know where that unit will be going from and to, and we work with the local education authority in the area to look at the availability of places. We also now have a system, as I think the Committee knows, where you can use your posting notice to enable you to apply for a place in a new school. Before, you were in this Catch-22 dilemma: you could not apply until you moved, but by the time you moved all the good places had gone. So measures are now in place to overcome those difficulties. Mobility is still an issue, but less than it was perhaps a few years ago.

Q445 Sir Bob Russell: I think the bureaucracy has certainly improved, but I shall be coming to some questions later on in this session-not immediately-that will come as no surprise to Mr Barlow and Mr Bull, because the reality is not quite as you have described. I only wish it was. I will return to that in my questions later on.

Mr Francois: Okay. At the risk of delaying you now, Sir Bob, I think that, from memory, the families continuous attitude survey in 2011 said that about 11% of families recorded a problem with actually finding a school place.

Sir Bob Russell: Eleven per cent?

Mr Francois: Yes. I think that that was down slightly to 10% in 2012. One in 10 is still an issue, but that probably compares favourably with the sort of situation we were discussing a few minutes ago.

Q446 Sir Bob Russell: I am sure that the national statistics are as you state, but later on I will suggest that it is not like that everywhere.

Mr Francois: Okay.

Q447 Ms Stuart: Before we move on from the subject of mobility, it is a problem whether it is a Service family or not. I have seen schools in Birmingham that have mobility rates of more than 60%, so there must be some lessons to be learned from how the sector generally deals with the difficulties of mobility that we could apply to help Service families. However, are there some elements of the mobility problem that you think are Service-specific, or is it a general problem that happens to affect Service families disproportionately?

Mr Francois: Part of the nature of Service life is mobility. If you are the child of a Service family, there is a possibility that, in the course of your education, you may move several times. However, at the higher level, if I can put it like that, we put a lot more resource and effort into planning unit moves and supporting applications for school places in a way that we did not a few years ago. That is one obvious area where I do not believe that we are now where we were some years ago. We do try to plan these things quite well in advance now. I think you looked at an example last week, Chairman, of moving the ARRC into Innsworth and the process followed there. That is one worked example, if you like. I do not know whether the Adjutant General has anything more he wants to add.

Q448 Ms Stuart: It is pupil mobility that I am after, not parent mobility.

Lieutenant General Berragan: I understand that-one is a knock-on from the other, I guess. We certainly try to give all our people as much notice of a move as possible, so that they can make plans and arrangements and also bring the children into that process, so that they are not surprised or daunted by it. We do not always achieve our target, which is a minimum four months’ notice of posting. Sometimes we achieve much more than that, if it is a routine posting, but sometimes operational necessity or unforeseeable events mean that people move at slightly shorter notice-indeed, sometimes people opt to move at shorter notice because they want to go to a posting. But where people have a particular problem, particularly in terms of access, as Sir Bob said, we will assist them through the Children’s Education Advisory Service, which has helped a number of Service families. In 2012, they supported 198 families who had appealed against their school admission, and 143 of those were successful with CEAS’s help.

Your point about overcoming some of the disadvantages of mobility is where things like the Service Pupil Premium come in and also the £3 million MOD Fund for support to those state schools with Service children.

Martin Bull: It is interesting, actually. I think you are right, there are probably lessons that could be learned from local authorities that have had different sorts of mobility issue. Gypsies, Roma and Travellers move around, for example. There are lots of lessons we could learn from how local authorities have dealt with them, but the £3 million is there to help with reasonably high mobility rates and to give the local authority or clusters of schools, however they apply for it, a bit of money to look to effective ways of working together to manage that. That might be a pastoral support officer going to four or five primary schools, as will happen in Hillingdon, to offer support for the children coming in, but that is in its first year. Lessons could be learned from the £3 million Fund that could be rolled out and shared more widely, particularly as we draw down from Germany and when the large numbers start to arrive in 2015, but we will be doing that.

Q449 Chair: What is the total cost of Service children’s education?

Martin Bull: In maintained education or in SCE schools?

Chair: In all of them.

Martin Bull: I would not know the answer.

Q450 Chair: Would you agree that £3 million, although very important, is nevertheless small beer compared with the issues that we are grappling with here?

Mr Francois: I think we do attempt to spend that money wisely.

Chair: Of course. Let us not spend too much time during the course of today-perhaps not as much time as we spent during the course of last week-discussing £3 million.

Q451 Ms Stuart: I think it is a very important point. The pupil mobility that would deliver you better education is a generic problem that might be disproportionate. In terms of our report, is the parent officer sufficient? It is not just a question of four months’ notice, so you know it is coming; the schools themselves have to deal with the pupils. If you have schools where you know this is going to happen, do you think the £3 million will deliver that? If it does, what will it buy?

Martin Bull: Putting the £3 million to one side, the pupil premium is there to help schools and mobility, and that is based on the number of children in the school census identified as Service children. It is there to be used to help induct that child and get that child’s curriculum up to speed, so that they can go straight into class and not learn about the Tudors three times. It is there to help them with social, emotional and pastoral needs. It has increased reasonably over the years since we introduced it. There is a strong commitment for us to retain that Service premium. The money is there per pupil: it is £300 this year, which is good news-it was £250 in the first year-and we are hoping it will rise.

Q452 Chair: The improvement is dramatic.

Martin Bull: We have some reasonably good case studies. Soft evidence suggests that the money has been used wisely to deal with that mobility issue.

Q453 Penny Mordaunt: Could you give us a bit more detail about those case studies? I am interested in what is currently being done to lessen the impact that mobility has on a child’s education. Can you give us some more examples?

Martin Bull: Absolutely. The DFE worked with the MoD and wrote to about 1,000 schools known to us to have high numbers of service children on the roll and we gathered case studies. I can give you examples of how it has been used. A head teacher might offer one-to-one tuition to help the child catch up in terms of the curriculum. It might be used to help induct them and provide a smooth transition from a school abroad to the new school. There might be support for a buddy system. Another example relates to SEN and whether support is needed around SEN for a child, so there is immediate support if the child arrived really quickly and was not known about in advance. It has been used a number of different ways.

The evidence is very soft, because we are not collecting evidence nationally on how schools have spent the Service premium. It is hard to judge and evaluate how schools have been kind to children and helped a child at a moment of anxiety and concern, for example, meeting the cost of an additional adult needed in the classroom to help that child settle that might have concerns about mum and dad being at war. Uncertainty and nervousness in the community can explode and lead to greater concerns across the school.

Q454 Penny Mordaunt: I fully appreciate that you can only do the qualitative stuff. Is there work going on to interview parents and children who have been through some of these case studies to see what has worked or what could have been done to help but was not?

Martin Bull: Our case studies are from head teachers, and they are named on the DFE website so that other schools can contact them directly if they want to learn more about what we have done locally. There has not yet been any follow-up work where we have interviewed pupils, teachers, heads or parents.

Q455 Penny Mordaunt: Is that something that you are considering doing?

Martin Bull: It is something I can go back and ask Ministers to consider, but not something that I can confirm today will happen.

Mark Francois: To amplify slightly, I was down in Devonport a few months ago having a discussion with a group of naval wives-when I visit garrisons or bases, as the AG will know, I normally try to put aside some time to meet with the families. In such conversations, you get a number of issues raised with you. One of the things that came up on the visit to Devonport was that a number of the parents wanted to know exactly how the Service Pupil Premium was being spent. They wanted more information on exactly where the money was going. We now encourage schools to publish on their websites how they deploy the Service Pupil Premium-as you have heard, it can be used in a number of different ways-so that parents and others can, at least to some degree, track how that money is employed. Also, I think Ofsted is beginning to take an interest in how the premium is being applied in those schools where it does apply.

Martin Bull: Michael Wilshaw wrote out and he actually mentioned Service children in his letter. He will be asking inspectors to look at effective ways in which the Service premium is being used. There are some positive ideas out there that could be generated and shared more widely about how it is being used, but the Service premium did only start in 2011, and it takes a bit of time to get head teachers to understanding what the Service premium is for and encouraging them to use it in a constructive way.

Mark Francois: It is anecdotal, but the fact that we have Service parents debating when a Minister goes to see them how best the money should be employed is positive, because, one, they are very aware of it and, two, they want greater visibility about how it is put to good use.

Chair: Sir Bob Russell, you were intending to ask some questions about this. Would you like to ask anything else?

Q456 Sir Bob Russell: Thank you. I think that was a tactical ploy by the Minister to get his strike in ahead of the section on the pupil premium, so I congratulate him on that. When the Committee took evidence at a school down on Salisbury Plain, we got a bit of a mixed message suggesting that some schools and some parents were not necessarily fully up to speed with the pupil premium. Will guidelines now be issued stating what should happen and what should not happen? Will all parents be told about the pupil premium and what it is being spent on?

Mark Francois: Clearly, that was an anecdotal example, Sir Bob, but some parents are aware of it. In fairness, this has only been going for a relatively short period of time, so it is something that is still rolling out, but clearly some parents must be aware of it if they are debating how it should best be spent. The idea is to give the money to the school and allow the school to decide how best to deploy the resources in the light of their local circumstances.

Q457 Sir Bob Russell: But do you agree that the Government, the taxpayer, parents and all of us need to know that money allocated is being used properly?

Mark Francois: I do not see how I could disagree with that in principle. As I said, this is public money, so we encourage schools to publish on their websites how they deal with that money, and how they best deploy it. This is now on Ofsted’s radar as well, so it is something they will be looking at when they conduct visits.

Q458 Sir Bob Russell: And as was indicated just a few moments ago by Mr Bull, £3 million is not really a lot of money to spread around, is it?

Mark Francois: I am sure if we said that it was £4 million, Sir Bob, someone would say that it should be £5 million. To some degree, that is the nature of Government.

Martin Bull: We also have performance tables that will give us a strong indicator of how well the children are doing in those schools. We will have Ofsted inspections, performance tables and information publicised on school websites on how the money is being used, so we will have three reasonably good indicators.

Q459 Sir Bob Russell: Do you think that the Government and everyone need to stress the fact that the pupil premium, when referring to children of military personnel, is not in the context of children from disadvantaged backgrounds? I am wondering whether we need to make it clear that it is a Service premium to support the children of military personnel, not because they are children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Mr Francois: I completely understand the spirit of the question. The premium is really to try to make up for some of the additional challenges that Service children might face because of the way in which their parents earn a living. We have discussed mobility to some degree, as well as the whole pastoral side, particularly if one or even both of the parents are on operations. Yes, it is bespoke money for a reason. It is not for disadvantaged "social clients"; it is for a different reason. We should allow the Department to say something about it, too.

Martin Bull: Absolutely. It is interesting. There is more that we can do to promote the Service premium, and I am strongly behind that at the Department. Part of the actions that I discussed last week in Committee, which Minister Elizabeth Truss has agreed to, is to write to local authorities and schools that will feel the impact of draw-down from Germany and highlight the fact that communications need to be clear with schools and parents, and that we want parents to register children at school centres to trigger off that pupil Service premium. We also want to provide them with guidance and support to make sure that they spend the money wisely and in the right way.

I hope that we shall be looking at case studies on Service premium for 2012-13, as we did for 2011-12 in the first year-even if it were soft, just to get an indication and to help those schools that perhaps are not so sure about what the money should be spent on. There is a bit of a misinterpretation that some parents think that the money is for them. It is for their children, not the school. I have received many phone calls from Service personnel asking, "When is my child going to get this money? We want to do something." So some of the communications mesaages to local authorities and schools need to be strengthened,, but I see that as part of what my job will be in the next month.

Q460 Mrs Moon: Mr Bull, I worked briefly at the Department for Children, Schools and Families. I remember that you had a supercomputer system, which I assume has been moved to the new Department for Education. It could actually track the performance of schools on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Does the computer recognise those schools where the pupil premium is being paid, and are you tracking performance that way, too?

Martin Bull: As far as I know, we are not.

Q461 Mrs Moon: Why not?

Martin Bull: I cannot answer that question, but I can go away and find an answer, and provide a note on it.

Q462 Mrs Moon: Perhaps it would be a way of actually checking whether the money that is coming from Mr Francois’s Department is benefiting those children, and whether you are seeing the outcomes.

Martin Bull: Absolutely. We would know through performance tables, of course, but we would not necessarily know how they did it. We would not know what changes the schools have made using the money that has led to the improvements or making sure that the children reach a high standard in education.

Q463 Mrs Moon: I remember that the results tracked performance as well. It seems that we are missing one of the areas that are available to the Department for Education. If you include in the system the fact that the money was going into individual schools, it might be another way of tracking.

Martin Bull: I will take that away, and come back with a note on it.1

Q464 Mrs Moon: Thank you very much.

Can I return to my concerns about the fact that, for Service families living in the devolved Administrations, the pupil premium is not being targeted in the way that it is in England? It is going into an unhypothecated spend, which means that it is not reaching those schools where the children are receiving their education. Mr Francois, you talked about money allocated and being spent appropriately. As a Welsh MP I promise you that I get lots of phone calls on this. What can you do to make sure that Service personnel’s children in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are not being disadvantaged if that premium is leading to such wonderful results in schools in England? How do we make sure that those pupils also get that help and support to mitigate the costs of the moveable life that their parents are involved in? What can we do and what are you doing?

Mr Francois: I will make a few broad remarks and then ask the team to contribute. Because these are devolved matters, the key here is to work as closely as possible with the devolved Administrations, to try to demonstrate where we believe that this has provided advantages in England and, where we can, to try to encourage the devolved Administrations, where devolution applies, to try to achieve similar effects via whichever methods they use. But, as you know, we do not have a Service Pupil Premium in the devolved Administrations in the way that we do in England per se. So-no pun intended-it is partly a process of education and dialogue, with us trying to explain to them the advantages that we believe it has delivered in England, for them to respect that under devolution, and to discuss ways in which we may be able to achieve those objectives in a devolved context.

Gavin Barlow: I think that is absolutely right. Indeed, the funding mechanism-the pupil premium-reflects the intervention necessary in order to create the right conditions within the particular funding framework for schools in England. It is the right approach there.

There is a similar, slightly larger payment with a slightly different framework around it in the Northern Ireland context. In Scotland, the funding approach is completely different to the approach to schools in England and our dialogue with the Scottish Government has confirmed their very strong view that they do not need a system that operates ostensibly in the same way as the pupil premium to achieve the effects of support for Service children that that delivers in England.

With all of the devolved Administrations, the Department now has much improved working relations, as a result of work on the covenant, to address issues around education, among others, with them. I know that, particularly with Wales, that discussion continues on how best to match the approach taken in England through the pupil premium. Gerry, do you want to say anything else about the Army’s view on how this works?

Lieutenant General Berragan: The other thing I would say is that since we set up the children and young people directorate-since your last investigation into this area-we are now much better equipped both at national and local levels. It starts really with a trust board, which I chair, which has around the table Martin from the DFE; the Department of Health; the local authority; Families Federations; and all of the commands. Through them, right the way down to the local level-the garrison, air station or naval base-there is a recognition that they need to work closely with the schools in their area to make sure that none of the Service children who attend those schools is disadvantaged.

So there is a feeling of responsibility throughout the Services that regional engagement is something that they must get involved in to make sure that Service children are not being disadvantaged. Also-I hesitate to mention it-the £3 million fund is also available to those schools who cannot access the pupil premium. When they make their bids for that fund, we take that into account; if they have a particular problem, say in Scotland, and apply for some assistance through the fund, that will be taken into account.

Chair: We have got slightly sidetracked here because we have gone down the pupil premium route, partly because of the wholly appropriate answers you have given. We were on mobility; one of the interesting issues about which is the New Employment Model.

Q465 Sandra Osborne: Could I follow on with the pupil premium for just a moment? I could be wrong but I believe that the money for the pupil premium comes from the MOD budget. Is that right?

Martin Bull: No, the pupil premium comes from the Department for Education; the £3 million fund comes from the MOD.

Q466 Sandra Osborne: You are very tactful about the devolved Administrations not taking that up, but they have signed up to the covenant like everybody else, so they should really be putting their money where their mouth is in that case. I am sure that that is a matter for us to take up.

Could I just ask about the New Employment Model? In the future, it is hoped that it will reduce the frequency of moves for families. When do you expect it to take effect?

Mr Francois: We are still developing the New Employment Model. Most of it will come into effect from 2015 onwards, once our combat troops have come back from theatre. In essence, NEM will mean greater stability for Service personnel and their families. It is the nature of Service life that they will still move from time to time, but they may move less. It may be easier for them to put down roots in the area in which they are living at one particular time. For instance, we are looking at house purchase incentives under NEM. So we will begin to see it roll out in a meaningful way from about 2015 onwards. But we are trying to look at some of these issues earlier in a wider NEM context. Do you want to follow up on that?

Lieutenant General Berragan: We aspire to greater stability, which is one of the areas that constantly comes up in the continuous attitude survey. People feel that the exigencies of Service life affect their families, their spousal income and their children’s education, so it is absolutely a target. I suspect, notwithstanding the policies the Minister has outlined, that the Army will not really be able to achieve a greater deal of stability until the last final brigade comes out of Germany, by which time we will hopefully be, with the exception of a small proportion in Cyprus, largely UK-based for the first time in over 100 years. In doing so, we are keeping people stable. We are not moving units as we used to move units. We are grouping units into areas. For example, the move of the Signals into Stafford will see something like five Signals regiments and two Signals brigades all within about half an hour’s drive of each other. That will enable people to settle their families, while still moving for career development purposes between jobs. We have targeted the lay-down of the Army on the basis of trying to achieve a much greater deal of stability without holding people back in terms of their career development. But it will take some time, and it is absolutely connected with the withdrawal from Germany.

Mr Francois: If I can just provide an example, we have to make provision for an additional brigade on Salisbury Plain as part of the withdrawal from Germany, and we will need to build new facilities and accommodation there. In a sense, for that extra brigade we will be starting almost with a clean sheet of paper. Part of that provision, for which the planning has already begun, will include asking how many extra schools we need and where they will be. We are already beginning to think about that.

Q467 Sandra Osborne: There will be a significant upheaval over the next few years, not just because of Germany, but because of the consolidation of RAF and Navy bases and rebasing in general. What other moves are you taking to reduce the impact on Service children of all that upheaval?

Lieutenant General Berragan: In each case of a staged move, such as the one you described of moving a naval base or an air station, we do very detailed planning, right down to individual children’s stages of education and ages, and work with the families and the welfare staff within the station to identify where those children will go in the future station. We work with the DFE and the local authority schools to place them. As the Minister mentioned, that is exactly what we did when we moved the ARRC [HQ] [Allied Rapid Reaction Corps] back from Germany. We have just done it when we moved an engineer regiment from Waterbeach up to Scotland. We will take the same approach from here on in, because it works quite well. It enables us to make sure that we have time so that we can plan it in detail, and they understand where they are going. We can make sure that their records are ahead of them before they get there, and make sure their move is as smooth and easy as we can make it.

Martin Bull: Can I just back that up? There is really good collaborative work between the DFE and the MOD on this issue. We have had the announcement of the draw-down from Germany, and we know the number of children who will be coming and what years they will be in between now and 2017. It is an excellent time for us to pre-plan with local authorities so that we can look at the funding mechanism to make sure that local authorities’ funding per pupil is right. We need to do positive things so that when those children and families arrive we can give them the best education from the moment they arrive. That is what we want to do.

Q468 Chair: There is a murmur from my right about the need to take into account devolved Administrations.

Martin Bull: Yes, that is in England-my answer was just related to England.

Q469 Chair: But your enthusiasm, which is infectious, is the sort of thing that will need to be applied to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Martin Bull: Perhaps I can go away and share my enthusiasm with Scotland and Wales.

Q470 Sir Bob Russell: I wonder if I could ask the Minister and Mr Bull to clarify this point on the new school or schools to be built around Salisbury Plain because of troops being returned from Germany: who is going to pay the capital cost of those buildings?

Mr Francois: I suspect we will make some contribution to the capital cost, but I suspect that we will need to discuss that in more detail with our colleagues from the DFE.

Q471 Sir Bob Russell: That was not a trick question, Minister; there is a genuine reason behind it. Perhaps we can park that one. In due course it will have to be asked anyway, because in due course the answer will need to be known-not today, but in due course. The line of questioning I was going to go into was that the Armed Forces Covenant is enshrined in law-the Prime Minister said it is the law of the land-and the Education Acts are the law of the land, so which takes precedence when it comes to the education of the children of our Service personnel?

Mr Francois: I do not accept that there is definitely a conflict between the Armed Forces Covenant and the schools admissions code, for instance. In fact, the schools admissions code was modified in order to try to give effect to the covenant principle of no disadvantage. Going further and creating marked advantages for Service parents in comparison to others in accessing the schools of their choice is potentially possible, I think. But when we have discussed this with the Service Families Federations, they are wary about that, because they are wary about how that might be seen by adult civilian parents. We do have to take that advice into account.

One of the two key principles, as you know well, is the principle of no disadvantage. We believe that the admissions code has been amended so as to try to provide that in practice. As you know, for instance, in primary schools, in certain classes you can now go above 30 if you need to do that in order to accommodate an influx of Service children. We have tried to modify the code in a way that honours the spirit of the no disadvantage principle.

Q472 Sir Bob Russell: I have little doubt that you and I are seeking the same objective here, so my questions are not designed to try to create division. However, my understanding is-and I am going to cite the local education authority of Essex-that when it comes to schools admissions at Montgomery Infant School in Colchester, the Education Act takes precedence over the Armed Forces Covenant. We have to find a way of squaring the circle for the very reasons you quite rightly outline. We do not want either to favour or disfavour either military families or civilian families.

Mr Francois: On that point, Sir Bob, that is a fair way of articulating it, but because we are both from the same county, I happen to know that when the results came out for parents’ preferences for schools, from memory, 94% of parents in Essex the other day got either their first choice or their second choice of school. The reason I mention that is that even for "civilian parents", not all of them get their first choice straight away. When we are talking about this we have to understand, on the one hand, that Service life can present some challenges, but equally that "civilian parents" have challenges getting kids into good schools as well; this is not, in fairness, a problem that is unique to the military. The question is, how do you get the balance right?

Sir Bob Russell: Minister, I think the only thing that is different is that we have the Armed Forces Covenant to support military families, whereas civilians do not have that. I thank you and your colleagues for your answers, which I am sure we will look at carefully to see whether there is a formula that the Committee can perhaps recommend in its report.

Q473 Chair: Surely the difference between civilian families and Armed Forces families is that while all families have a certain degree of difficulty in getting a place in the school of their choice, the Armed Forces families have the additional hurdle of the mobility that goes with being a member of the Armed Forces or being in the family of a member of the Armed Forces.

Mr Francois: I think we are conscious of that. The sole point I was trying to make was that getting a good school place for your child is not a problem faced only by military parents. I would not want to overegg my point stronger than that.

Q474 Chair: Okay. Thank you. On conflict areas, there are large numbers of families with Service children where one or both parents are serving in a conflict area. What are the Ministry of Defence able to do to support the children of those families?

Mr Francois: Clearly we have a heavy responsibility in that area. When units are about to deploy, we lay on presentations and briefings for the family members who will be staying at home to explain as far as possible what that Serviceperson-in broad terms, at least-is going to be up to. We try to condition them in what to expect with communication back home and other things. We encourage parents to let the schools know when a serving parent is going on operations, so that the teachers can be aware and be sensitive to any change in that child’s behaviour because their father or mother is not around and they are concerned for them. Do you want to add to that, General?

Lieutenant General Berragan: I can. I am conscious, having appeared before the Committee before, that I have to speak about things I hold up, because the record is written. I am holding up "A Guide for Service Families: UK Education Systems" and a "Supporting Children, Young People and Families During Periods of Deployment" booklet, both of which are provided in the pre-operation deployment briefings to the families of servicemen who are deploying. We hold those briefings not just for the servicemen and women, but their families, too. We try to give them as much preparation as possible and encourage them to contact the schools. Not all of them do, and some of them choose not to, but we do so wherever possible.

We also back it up. Where the schools are in a garrison area, our welfare staff will go and visit the schools and ensure that they know. I think you had some examples of that when you were in Tidworth. Clearly some families have children at schools outside of garrisons. It is possible that a school would be unaware that a child’s parent is deployed, but we try to do everything we can to mitigate it and to help and support them.

Q475 Mrs Moon: I would like to move on to problems faced by Service families with children who have special educational needs. One of the issues that concerns us is the number of families, with a child who has a statement, who move regularly. They move to a new school, and the statementing process starts all over again. Are there opportunities for schools to be advised, instructed or guided?

One of the things that we were told by Mrs Denson in the previous sitting was that the contextual part of the educational assessment of children with special educational needs-about where the child is, how they relate to their peer group, and whether their needs may be different in another location-is a tiny part of any statement. Why can schools not accept the larger statement and do the contextual part as the child settles into school? I have talked to teachers about this, and they have told me over and over again that every time the child moves, they lose their progress, because by the time the statement is ready the child may be moving on again. Is there anything that can be done so that the statement is kept and the contextual changes are done as you get to know the child?

Mr Francois: Do you want to go first?

Martin Bull: Yes. It is a really interesting question, and when it came up last week I went away and gave it some thought. To be clear, legislation about statements is the responsibility of local authorities. However, we are aware that statementing can sometimes take a long time, for example up to two years, which is totally crazy, I agree. I was trying to think about what we might do to improve matters for Service children-easy and quick wins and things that might work.

The first issue I want the Committee to be aware of is that we work very closely with the MOD. We are currently revising the draft SEN Code of practice, and we will want to ensure that it includes appropriate signposting to enable teachers and headteacher access to ready-made good practice and a DVD that has been developed by Service Children Education . We will be signposting them, so that schools know where to go. Information sharing is key here. We have also arranged for SENCO training abroad. Originally, SENCO training in England was not necessarily recognised in Germany, so we have made sure that SENCO training could be made available to those who need to take that training and support the SEN children abroad. You now have some consistency, in terms of how information on those children is reported and recorded, so that when information moves from, say, Germany to England, similar messages come across.

As you know, the Minister, Elizabeth Truss, mentioned last week that she has agreed that we can go ahead with planned communications with local authorities to alert them ahead of draw-down from Germany. That is also about alerting them to children with SEN. The SCE, which is part of the MOD, has a database of children with SEN; I think it is about 2,000 children2. That is a lot of children, when you think about it. We can make sure that schools in England has access to the data when we know that the children are coming to those local authorities. We get them to pre-plan their provision. They probably could also access information and assessments early on, so that they can make their own judgments, based on local provision and consider what is available in the local authority to meet the needs of that child. We could do lots of pre-planning in that way.

I will be honest with you: a few children are going to fall through the net. With any children with SEN when they move around, whether they are an Service child or a civilian child, we are going to have some who fall through the net. However, these actions will have a positive impact over time. I think it will improve the support being offered to Service children with an SEN.

Mr Francois: If I may, I should like to add to that, because you have asked a very good question. When we were preparing for this session we discussed this. There are just a few points from where I sit. First, as Members of Parliament, we all have some ground truth on this. We know that it can sometimes take parents quite a long while to get a statement. That is not a partisan point; that can be under LEAs of different political colours. As Martin fairly said, it can sometimes be quite a process, so if you have fought your way through that process, got your child statemented and have to move to another area, and to some degree go back to square one, I can completely understand a parent’s frustration in those circumstances. I think we need to look at whether there is anything we can do to help.

It occurs to me that this is a classic example of where the community covenant could be meaningful. I checked this morning the number of local authorities that have signed community covenants. This is hot off the press: it is 289, so going on for 300 local authorities across the UK have signed the community covenant. We are way beyond half now. By signing that covenant, local authorities, including LEAs, have pledged in effect to accept the two key principles, including the principle of no disadvantage. It strikes me that this is something to which we could alert LEAs, specifically saying that it can be a particular issue for Service children and their parents, and we can ask them, in line with the spirit of the covenant, to see what more they can do to try to give particular attention to Service parents coming in with kids who have statements. If they do need to go round the loop again to some degree, we will try to get some way to prioritise that. That is something that is definitely worth looking at.

Mrs Moon: I think that is an excellent initiative. I would take it back to the issue of the devolved Administrations: although Mr Bull can do what he can do in England, you are going to have to start those early conversations as a Department with the devolved Administrations. I am looking at you, Lieutenant General. In terms of the basing review, I have 600 families moving into the Vale of Glamorgan, where, especially when it comes to special educational needs, they will be looking to my local authority. We need that conversation to be happening in the same way.

Lieutenant General Berragan: We have regional representatives from the Children’s Education Advisory Service who fulfil that function. They work for Olivia Denson, who appeared before you last week, and we are engaging with them. As you say, Scotland in particular takes a different approach to statementing special educational needs from England and some of the other devolved Assemblies.

Mr Francois: Although, in fairness, coming back to my community covenant point, quite a few of the local authorities in Wales have signed community covenants. Indeed, in Scotland, almost all of them have signed now. Being able to leverage that at a local government level underneath the devolved Administrations could prove effective, because we are getting very good coverage in Scotland and quite good coverage in Wales.

Mrs Moon: Chairman, I wonder whether we could ask for an update on that.

Q476 Chair: Certainly we need an update on that in due course. As you have been speaking, I have been writing down what you have been saying. Mr Bull said that after last week’s evidence session you had been trying to think what we could do to try to improve things, and that we could do lots of pre-planning. You, Minister, said that we need to look at whether there is anything that we can do to help, and that there is one particular thing that is definitely worth looking at.

That is all extremely encouraging and very nice. However, it is also, in its own particular way, disgraceful, because in 2006, we said, "We recommend that the DfES and the MOD consider introducing, as a priority, a system whereby Service children with Special Needs are given a Statement of educational needs which can be taken with them as they move between schools." That was repeated by Ofsted in 2011. It is wonderful to think that you listened to the evidence that we gave last week, but for it to have taken more than six years for nothing to happen is absolutely disgraceful.

Mr Francois: Let me take that head on. As a Member of Parliament, like the rest of you, I have dealt with parents whose children have been statemented. I can understand your frustration. I am not going to comment on other Ministers who may have held this portfolio in 2006. Clearly, the Department has not made fast enough progress on this matter, but I will look you right in the eye and tell you that we are going to make some progress on it now.

Chair: I should hope so, too. Gisela Stuart.

Q477 Ms Stuart: It may be helpful in that process if you could do us a note. Earlier, I think Mr Bull said that there were 2,000 children on the register. Will you let us know what percentage of the total number of Service children that represents? Is that proportionately higher or lower than the national average, including the devolved Administrations? With that, would you include a time scale of how, after six or seven years of inactivity, we could measure activity?

Mr Francois: We need to talk to our colleagues in the DFE. We also, in fairness, need to talk to other colleagues.3

Q478 Ms Stuart: I think it is a bit early to come up with excuses for why you may not be answering this in due course. Let’s just try first, shall we?

Mr Francois: With respect, Ms Stuart, I was not making excuses. I have given a commitment that we are going to do something about it. I can’t promise to come back here tomorrow morning and say that I have cracked it. In fairness, we need to talk to our colleagues in the DFE, but also colleagues in local government and the LGA, about what we can do on this.

Chair: Let us move on now to the continuity of education allowance and boarding schools. Sandra Osborne.

Q479 Sandra Osborne: The recent tightening up of eligibility for the allowance caused a level of misunderstanding and concern. What are you doing to make the system clearer?

Gavin Barlow: We have communicated a lot about the rules that we have changed on continuity of education allowance. I think I acknowledged in evidence last week that that had caused some concern, when the initial set of rule changes was put in place. Some of the things that we have done more recently have been in response to some of the feedback that we have had from families and from the chain of command.

We introduced a reform a few months ago that makes it easier for the parents of children who, for whatever personal reasons and circumstances, wish to withdraw altogether from CEA-supported boarding. The family can simply come forward and say that they do not wish to continue with CEA. That is fine. The process is now that they can simply withdraw from taking the allowance. It used to be much more difficult to do that. It generated a lot of casework for the Department and a good deal of ill-feeling among the families affected. That was a rule change we made in response to what people felt about how we were operating the allowance.

The other thing we are doing now is redrafting the rules that support the allowance and that are available to unit staff, families and the CEA advisory service-essentially, the people who have to operate the thing-to make it a lot clearer what the process is for obtaining eligibility certificates, how judgments will be made about that, and what the rules are around the allowance. We are testing that out with staff and parents around the Department to make sure that we get it right, and we will be providing more communication about that when we put that new rules set into place, but it is based on clarification and ensuring that the thing can be operated more easily, which should help, again, to deal with the concerns that families have had about how to access and use the allowance.

Q480 Sandra Osborne: So it is about clarification; it is not a matter of a major change of policy, which people may be concerned about if they feel you are looking at it again?

Gavin Barlow: Yes. They should not think that. We have not advertised that we plan a major change in CEA policy. What we are talking about is clarification of the rules set. There have been a number of changes incrementally since the SDSR, including the one I just mentioned about withdrawal, some of which have been dealt with in Defence Information Notices and so on. That has contributed to a situation where we want to rewrite the whole thing so that it is easier to understand and is really clear. It is part of the work we are doing generally on our allowances to make them more readily accessible and understandable.

Q481 Sandra Osborne: Have cuts in the funding of this been a factor and, if so, how do you balance that with the needs of the children?

Gavin Barlow: When the SDSR review of the overall Service allowances package took place, that was definitely driven by a requirement to save money. When we went through the allowances, we looked at the extent to which they could be justified in the circumstances that faced the country and, indeed, the Department at that stage. Some elements of the allowances package couldn’t be, and some elements of the continuity of education allowance rules clearly needed tightening. The most significant of those was the rule that enabled people to access the continuity of education allowance when they were serving in posts in which they were designated as involuntarily separated: people who served in central London, at Permanent Joint Headquarters-in some posts-and at sea. That did not align with the fundamental requirement of CEA to support education continuity for parents who choose to serve accompanied-who follow each other-and through mobile postings. That was a major rule change that we made; we tightened up that rule. That was fair. We explained the reasons behind it, and although it was certainly unpopular with those who were accessing the allowance in that way-that was about 600 claimants when the rule change was introduced-it has been accepted by the Services and is operating well.

Q482 Sandra Osborne: So you can understand why there would be concern if people knew you were looking at it again. The review you are carrying out-will there be cutbacks associated with that?

Gavin Barlow: No.

Q483 Sandra Osborne: Why do you think there has been a significant reduction in the number of claimants since 2009-10?

Gavin Barlow: I would associate a large part of that with the reduction in overall numbers of Service personnel over that period, and also with the changes to the involuntary separation rules, which probably account for several hundred of the reduction in claimants, but the number is about where we would expect it to be at the moment, given the trends in take-up of the allowance and the impact of the rule changes that we have put in place. I would refer also to much more careful governance within all the Services, which have all looked at their CEA claimant community carefully to make sure that all the claims are well founded and properly documented. During that process, a number of people have withdrawn from claiming the allowance who perhaps did not meet those standards, and some others are perhaps more reluctant to put themselves forward as well, but it continues to support well over 4,000 claimants. The allowance is very well used and needed by the Service community.

Q484 Sandra Osborne: I believe there are far fewer claimants from the lower ranks of the armed forces than from the higher echelons. Why would that be?

Gavin Barlow: That very much reflects the demographic of the Service community. Most of the junior ranks will not have school-age children, whereas you will find that not all, but the majority of those who serve with school-age children-for CEA purposes, children aged over eight-will be senior non-commissioned officers, or officers. I think the peak-the largest block of claimants-is round about Captain/Major level. That is where the demographic peaks, but that is just representative of the nature of the Service community as a whole, rather than an idea that it might be in some way an officers’ allowance or something of that nature, because it is not. It is available to all Service personnel who meet the mobility requirements and have children of the relevant age, if they wish to have it.

Q485 Sandra Osborne: Do you think they are all aware of its availability?

Gavin Barlow: Yes, I think it is a very well-advertised, well-known allowance.

Q486 Mr Holloway: I completely understand the need to save cash when we are borrowing north of £200 million every single day. I absolutely understand the need for cuts to this particular allowance, but for those who are capable of getting jobs in the civilian world, where they can generate the sort of money required to pay for private education, do you think that there is a danger that you will, as a consequence of this, lose bright people, not just now, but in future, and that, to some degree, perhaps you will lower the quality of people who are in the Services?

Lieutenant General Berragan: No. I think that, going back to Gavin Barlow’s point, CEA is there for a specific purpose, which is to compensate for mobility-in other words, to allow people to obtain continuity of education, even though they are mobile-and often, as you rightly say, those who are moving fastest up the rank structure will probably be moving around as well. So it is there for that purpose, and I think it will remain for that purpose, for that particular cohort. I do not think there is any plan in the foreseeable future for there not to be some sort of continuity of education allowance for those people. I am not worried about it. If the nature of those people’s career development and the trajectory of their rise requires them to move often, we will ensure that we provide continuity of education for them. Therefore, that would not be, or should not be, the reason why they perhaps go outside and get better-paid jobs somewhere else.

Q487 Mrs Moon: The Committee was shocked last week to learn that parents’ ability to move their children, when they have concerns in relation to their overall welfare, involves a value judgment by civil servants in the Ministry of Defence on whether they are allowed to move. Are you happy that the MOD makes that judgment, rather than trusting families to know what is best for their child?

Lieutenant General Berragan: If we are talking about the safeguarding issue, let us be perfectly clear that if a child needs to leave a school-a child who is attending a school and receiving CEA-for safeguarding purposes, there is no question of that child not continuing to receive CEA in any future school. If it is a safeguarding reason, it is pretty cut and dried. However, I go back to the point about it being called "continuity of education allowance". There have to be some rules. I have seen examples in the past where people have moved children around the independent sector as they have moved-moving them close to them, for convenience-but that is not what continuity of education is about. There have to be some rules about how often you can move schools, particularly within stages of education, otherwise people might be tempted to abuse it. There has to be a balance.

Q488 Chair: Why?

Lieutenant General Berragan: Because why would we pay someone to move their child from independent school to independent school when, if they were moving, they could move from state school to state school? The whole purpose of continuity of education is to get continuity for that stage of education.

Q489 Chair: What damage does it do you?

Lieutenant General Berragan: It undermines the purpose of the allowance. Why would we pay them continuity of education allowance if they are not getting continuity of education?

Q490 Mrs Moon: Perhaps you can provide us with details of how many requests to move you have received and the reasons for those requests. You said very clearly that where it is an issue of safeguarding children, there would be no problem with a request to move, but that is not the information that I have received from families who have requested to move on the basis of safeguarding. Can we also have details of the numbers of requests relating to safeguarding, when the request to move was received and when the move was authorised? Last week, we were informed that it was not the role of the Ministry of Defence to investigate, and that it would be passed to local authorities.

Lieutenant General Berragan: We can certainly submit that, Mrs Moon. I think the point that was being made last week was that we have a statutory power and responsibility for safeguarding in places where we deliver education, such as in SCE schools and overseas. We have absolutely no statutory powers or responsibility in this country; those powers lie with the local authority. If a parent were to alert us to a safeguarding issue in a school in this country, the first thing we would do is point them in the direction of the local authority, or indeed the police, if it was that sort of nature of incident. The second thing we would do is alert the police or the local authority to that issue. It is not our responsibility to deal with it.

Q491 Mrs Moon: I fully understand that it is not your responsibility to do it. I want to be very clear: you would not require a family to maintain their child in a school where the family feels that the child is being abused while investigations are carried out, before you authorise a move?

Lieutenant General Berragan: We will submit that.

Q492 Chair: You have told us the first thing that you would do, but if you were looking at it from the point of view of a parent, the first thing a parent would do is move their child.

Lieutenant General Berragan: Not necessarily. I know that is counterintuitive, but in some cases not necessarily.

Q493 Mrs Moon: If you say that a child cannot move while the local authority carries out its investigations, what steps does the Ministry of Defence take to ensure that that investigation is carried out, and carried out thoroughly? What oversight do you have of that case, given that you are paying for the education in a school where there are allegations of abuse?

Lieutenant General Berragan: I think that we are providing parents with the money to pay for education for their children, so ultimately this is the parent’s choice. I think our responsibility is to alert the proper authorities if this thing is brought to our attention. It is not necessarily our responsibility to get between the relationship between the school and the parent. The parent is, after all, the person who has chosen the school for their child.

Q494 Mrs Moon: You are getting in the way of choice. You are saying that the child has to stay unless you give permission for the child to move, so that the continuity of education allowance goes with the child. You are getting in the way of that choice.

Gavin Barlow: Can I just offer a point here? Sorry to butt in. One of the things that we are doing at the moment in the clarification of the rules set is addressing precisely that point, to make it clear that safeguarding issues are a critical concern for us and for parents, necessarily, and that where there are clear safeguarding concerns on the part of the family, we do not require lengthy casework, written submissions, applications and so on to be taken through the normal process that would apply if a parent wanted to move their child and break continuity of education. I am sure that it would be helpful, as part of our written submission, to set out the rules as we are going to clarify them. I think that they are essentially a description of the rules that are already applied in practice by CEAS and the SPVA. It would be helpful to make clear how we are setting out those rules so that people will properly understand them in the future, bearing in mind precisely your point that in these sorts of situations, safeguarding issues are of critical concern and properly outweigh concerns about education continuity per se.

Chair: Thank you very much indeed.

Q495 Mrs Moon: Can I just ask one final question? Can you confirm whether or not the Ministry of Defence gives advice to families where children have been abused? When the children are moved, taking with them their continuity of education allowance, are families given advice and guidance in relation to criminal injuries compensation and their right to claim that for the trauma the children have experienced? If you do not know, could you look at it?

Lieutenant General Berragan: I do not know the answer to that question, but I will look at it and come back to you.

Chair: I think that that brings us to the end of that particular inquiry. With the exception of the Minister, to whom we will hang on, if we may, I would like to say thank you very much indeed to the other witnesses.