Defence CommitteeWritten evidence from Dr Alison Baverstock

Thank you for the opportunity to provide information to this inquiry. I am responding to this request:

As a Services wife of nearly 30 years;

As a mother of four Services children (currently 24, 22, 19 and 17);

As former Osnabruck Garrison Coordinator (1991–93) for the newly formed Federation of Army Wives (FAW, now the Army Families Federation, AFF); worries over education were frequently raised;

As a university lecturer who has researched and written extensively about parenting (Whatever! and It’s not fair! are both published by Hachette);

As founder and director of Reading Force (www.readingforce.org.uk) which promotes the use of shared reading to assist effective and preferably inter-generational communication within Services families, particularly during periods of separation, deployment and associated stress.

Summary

The children of Armed Forces families often have difficulties in accessing the same standards of education as their civilian counterparts, due to their greater mobility, ongoing anticipated instability within the community they join, and associated inability to plan ahead. All of these factors can have an impact on both levels of engagement within their education and their involvement within the school environment.

In general, attitudes towards Services families within schools are improving and levels of awareness of the particular challenges they face increasing. But further developments could usefully both promote their better engagement and highlight the valuable lessons in diversity and change management they potentially offer. Whereas they tend to attract attention for the administrative burden they bring, Services families also have much to offer the schools and communities they become part of.

I would like to offer information on the following specific points.

1. Access to equal standards of education

“Children of members of the Armed Forces should have the same standard of, and access to, education (including early years services) as any other UK citizen in the area where they live.” (The Armed Forces Covenant)

Services’ quarters are generally located close to relevant bases/local services and so families will probably technically have access to associated community schools. In practice, their ability to ensure access is much less certain.

Since the detailed monitoring of schools and the public availability of the associated reports/results began, access to the most favoured schools within areas of high population density has become vastly more competitive, and civilian families tend to plan well ahead to achieve places for their children. There are regular reports in the media of how homes with the right postcode for particular schools attract a premium and many associated tales of tactical moves by families keen to achieve access. I have known family planning be similarly orchestrated to ensure continued access to a particularly popular school.

Services parents are denied the ability to long-term plan. No application can be made for a school place until the family has an address, and shortage of quarters in some locations means you often only get allocated a quarter just before a posting—and the school you would have chosen is already full. Popular schools with no remaining places have a waiting list, which is often held by the local educational authority, further distancing the incoming Services families from understanding how the process works. The children of Services families, who arrive late but lack special needs, go to the bottom of the list.

As a personal example of this process in action, we were posted to London just before our eldest son (then rising five) was due to start school, but until we had an address we could not apply for a school place. The move took place in the middle of December and although the local school was anticipating vacancies (ironically due to Services children moving) when we moved it still had no space for him. We eventually heard during the Christmas holidays where he could start school for the first time in January. This was not an ideal beginning to a child’s school career, and provided no chance to prepare him—other than buying the sweatshirts at the last minute. Two years later, on leaving this posting, we were not able to find out whether we had places at the school for our (by then two) school age-children until just before moving. This meant that in our pre-move visit to show the children where they would be living, we were not able to show them their anticipated school.

Different arrangements for starting school/curriculum delivery can be similarly confusing. For example, our daughter started school twice; once where schools took rising fives, and then in a second location where schools only took children in the term when they were five. It is obviously the parent’s responsibility to help the child manage change, but perhaps local authorities could be more aware of the associated difficulties.

If you do not get access to the school of your choice, or your children are scattered between several schools, it is possible to appeal. In my general (not subject to any wider research) experience such appeals are well supported by Services’ legal teams and appeals are usually won—but inevitably result in a delay before the child can start, and then the difficulty of integrating within a school that did not want you in the first place, in the knowledge that you will be moving on before too long. There is a further difficulty in that Services personnel are used to rules and to raising issues within a prescribed chain of command, and so appealing outside the system to a local education authority, with which they have no prior connection, feels particularly uncomfortable.

If you have several children and cannot gain places for them all at the same establishment, you may end up with the difficulty of trying to get several young children to different schools at the same time of day; particularly awkward if there are distances to travel and the partner does not drive (relatively common for soldiers’ wives). Such logistic difficulties also impact on a partner’s ability to get employment.

Suggested solutions

Being a Services child should bring priority points for a school place within a local education authority along with adoption, children in care, special needs, siblings etc.

Schools should be allowed to go above their official quota of pupils to take incoming Services children, as it is likely that the overall total will subsequently fall again due to postings.

Both these policies would hopefully reduce the need for appeals, but appeals process that does remain should be vastly speeded up and made more informal (so less of an ordeal).

2. Mid school year postings

A mid school year posting is the most disruptive type, and may result in three class teachers in a single year (eg September, January, September). It can be particularly difficult if schools in the new location are full and a child has to wait for a place; this delays the making of new friendships and often results in them pining for relationships left behind.

In my experience schools respond variously well to mid-year moves. This is an opportunity to show how to manage change and integrate new faces into the classroom, and our children have certainly benefitted from this. But it is also the opportunity to allocate children according to gaps in groups rather than through full and appropriate identification of their abilities and intended learning outcomes—and can be seen by all involved as an administrative burden. The documentation from the previous school does not necessarily arrive at the same time as the child.

Suggested solutions

Promote a system similar to the that operating within the US Military, where I believe postings are always in the summer so accompanying children can start the new term with everyone else.

Allow schools to go over their yearly quota of pupils for mid-year arrivals to ensure rapid involvement in a school on arrival.

3. Early years provision overseas

Many units make their own provision. This can mean there is not much mixing between units, which may or may not be desirable.

4. Effective arrangements for transition between schools

Teachers and school administrators I have talked to (notably since setting up Reading Force) are keen to help pupils manage an anticipated move, and talk of better planning of the process. This is to their credit, but in practice many Services families will not be willing to inform a school of a likely move until the very last moment. This for a number of reasons:

Arrangements for postings do change. Seemingly firm commitments for specific postings are not infrequently changed at the last minute—it’s important not to give up a school place until you are completely sure you will be moving. If you have already formally informed the school that you will be leaving, you cannot then ask for the place back.

Parents do not wish to interrupt or compromise friendships with information about a forthcoming move until they have to—once a child knows they are leaving they may find themselves less included by friends, or themselves disengage from the school community/curriculum.

Giving up your child’s place at a school is a very painful experience; the parents have watched them make friends, themselves bonded with other parents, and avoiding the issue by not informing the school until the last minute is perhaps not to be unexpected.

The school the child is leaving is required to transfer records to the new school, but in practice this can take a long time, and is particularly difficult if you are not yet sure of the new address (because you are holding out from making a decision in order to try and get several children into a single school, and whichever can offer places for them all will be the chosen establishment). Several times we were given a package of information on each child for us to take with us and ourselves deliver.

Suggested solutions

Understand why parents may not be willing to provide information on their forthcoming move.

Offer a confidential alerting procedure which enables parents to informally announce anticipated arrangements, and receive guidance on effective management of the process, but without commitment. This would enable schools to plan better and help parents share the problem.

Make better arrangements for the transfer of supporting documentation; encourage the new school (where known) to contact the previous one—to learn more about a different institution. This could become a topic/theme to benefit the whole class/school.

Acknowledge the pain of children left behind when Forces children move on.

5. Families with special educational needs

This is particularly difficult as you build up relationships with case-workers with knowledge of your specific situation and then have to move on and build up a supportive relationship with a new team. Some families opt to be stable due to particular difficulties/good solutions with local establishments, but then they have to cope with single-parenting during the working week/month (depending on distance to be travelled between new job and quarter).

Suggested solutions

Consider a points based system which could move with you, or documentation in the form of a passport that accompanies the child.

Some of the practices/documentation used on behalf of “looked after” children might be usefully examined—see British Agency for Adoption and Fostering.

6. Support for Services families in settling into new schools

Over the years, and with four children, there were a number of strategies we used to promote swift settling in:

Have some form of leaving event from the first school and acknowledge the pain of leaving friends—as well as the situation of those who remain; encourage them to keep in touch;

Choose a school where Forces children are in the minority, so they would be understood but not become part of a self-isolating group. We always wanted them to integrate and encouraged them to take part in whatever the school/local community put on (eg music festivals, Irish dancing, local gym club etc);

Quickly ask a classmate back for tea—especially the individual who had volunteered to “look after” the new child in the class (a common way in which schools manage the integration of new pupils);

Offer to get involved with the school, perhaps by joining the PTA, helping at the school fair/gardening day/swimming pool rota.

Suggested solutions

Offer information on strategies for effective transition between schools in a leaving pack for moving families, or provide regular features in the AFF Journal. During the first Iraq war, FAW made available a useful short guide, in bullet point form, to help children deal with their fathers’ absence—something similar on moving schools might be helpful.

Produce similar information for schools.

7. How many Services children are there within a school?

One interesting finding from the research that accompanied Reading Force is that Services families do not always identify themselves as such to the schools they join—as they do not wish to be labelled. It is not uncommon for civilian families to advise their children not to make friends with Services children because they risk being abandoned when the children move on.

We found in feedback from schools which used Reading Force that there were instances of the project helping schools to identify who are the Services children and also promoting links between Services children in different classes and year groups, which increased their ability to offer mutual support. The availability of the Forces Pupil Premium, and school requests for relevant children to be identified as such in order for them to access the funds, has similarly been helpful in promoting awareness of Services children within schools.

Suggested solutions

Consider whether the number of Services children on a school’s roll should be required information.

Allow this information be captured confidentially so if a family does not want to share publicly they do not have to.

8. Attitudes towards Services children

Once frankly seen as a bit of a nuisance for school administrators (they arrive late, leave early, require lots of administration and can attract irritation from the local population who want access to the places they occupy) in recent years I have observed significant progress in attitudes towards Services children and their more welcoming accommodation within schools. This may be due to the higher profile of overseas engagements involving troops and the work of associated charities. At a recent conference in Birmingham, organised by the Services Children’s Support Network, the good intentions of educational professionals were strongly in evidence—although this perhaps may be anticipated from what was a self-selecting audience.

In future, in addition to promoting and managing their effective transition through various schools, perhaps the benefits of having Services children could be more effectively advocated. As parents, I feel one of our most important roles is to promote both a lack of fear of change and an ability to manage change as a process. Appreciating the experience of Services children, and the changes they must accommodate and build on, can surely help their classmates (and perhaps even their teachers!) empathise with the processes they go through—and help them develop useful strategies for dealing with change too.

Services families are often “joiners in”, who contribute to school organisations and have a “can do” mentality. They broaden the community and add diversity—certainly our own children regularly added sectors to class pie charts showing place of birth, when almost everyone else had been born in the local hospital. Services children also connect their classmates with the wider world; their experience is particularly linked to national events and what is in the news.

This differentness can be built upon through associated schools offering support to Services children with particular issues—eg postings and deployment, moving—through establishing drop in centres at regular times of the week and featuring initiatives such as Reading Force.

Suggested solutions

Could schools with particularly strong experience of managing Services children be nominated as mentor schools; able to offer advice to those with less awareness? I realise that SCISS is a very valuable body, but think that schools have to self-nominate to join. Does their expertise get more widely shared to all schools, including private/public ones where many Services pupils are boarding?

Enable the voice of Services parents with relevant experience to be heard, and to influence the debate.

Should the issue of the effective management of Services children be more prominent as a measure of a school’s overall effectiveness—monitored by Ofsted, regularly featured in Inset training days?

January 2013