Defence CommitteeWritten evidence from the Naval Families Federation

NFF WEBSITE POLL ON DEFENCE SELECT COMMITTEE INQUIRY: EDUCATING THE CHILDREN OF SERVICE PERSONNEL

Results: 09/01/13—28/01/13
Responses: 17

Poll Text

"Along with the other Family Federations, the NFF is submitting evidence to the Defence Select Committee inquiry on the education of the children of serving personnel; we are keen to know your views. This survey closes on 28 January.

This inquiry is the third in a series of inquiries looking at the Armed Forces Covenant in action. The Covenant states that “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 in which they live”.

This is an opportunity to express your opinions on the positives and negatives of Service children’s education in the UK and overseas.

In particular, the Committee is interested in:

The difficulties Service families face to achieve the same standard of education for their children as civilian families.

The provision of education for all Service children from pre-school to age 19, including those with special needs.

The transfer of pupil information when moving schools, in particular pupils with Special Educational Needs.

The effectiveness of the various financial support schemes for all Service families.

The adequacy of oversight and monitoring of Service Children’s education.

The poll is just one question; an open text box for your general comments. Responses are anonymous.

The survey closes on 28 January.

Question 1. Your Comments

It is wrong that service children are not able to access their catchment schools when they move into a new area. My experience was that I had two juniors school aged children in two different junior schools who started at the same time each morning and finished at the same time. Neither school could offer two places. A logistical nightmare!

have used boarding schools funded by the navy, best decision I have ever made great education. very important for secondary school aged children to be able to stay in one school to minimise disruption to education and social development by moving round every two years.

We find it varies and two of children have missed out lots with all the moving and lack of picking this up upon moving schools even though we being school packs. Boarding school is good as we choose this route for elder two but even with it being a forces school it has also failed to pick up the gaps in education and this causes issues for our children. Service premium needs to be made clear as to what it is to be used for as the schools get it but we see no change in the support to our children. If any extra is given at all.

I am still in receipt of CEA for my children. If that were not the case I imagine that my children would be severely disadvantaged by moving, in my case, from civilian life into the Navy and (so far) one major move from Plymouth to Gosport and another imminent to Faslane. The moves of school would have come at the midpoint of GCSE or A level course preparations which, according to their teachers, would mean they would inevitably have covered some parts of the relevant syllabi twice and other parts not at all. Access to boarding schools has been essential for their educational success and the lack of it would have been disastrous for them.

I think this would be a good idea on improving all of these services. Having a child and having been a military child I know how difficult it was. School records were lost for me and it resulted in me repeating an amount of school work. Moving and starting again making friends etc was also hard. However it may also have a bad effect on some children. Children may think they are getting special treatment so keeping it at adult level would be the best option. So a teacher wouldn’t go in a class and say who is a military kid etc. like you wouldn’t do for single parent families.

There are still many families struggling to get their child statemented and supported with complex educational needs.

We have never used schools in “base ports” and have found little or no support when it comes to our local schools. My daughter (now 9) has struggled from day one at school, many of her issues began when her dad was deployed for nearly 20 months over a period of two years—she completely withdrew from peers and learning, no support was forthcoming from anywhere I looked or asked for help, including naval agencies! Her school decided she must have autistic tendencies—she did not- even after I showed them all the signs and symptoms that a child who is coping with deployment could have they refused to listen or even read them. We have since changed school and hope that they have a greater understanding. The pupil premium is a fantastic idea in principle but useless when it amounts to a small sum as the only forces child in school. My children’s money disappeared into the ether never to be seen or heard of and certainly not used for their benefit. It was only after I claimed that the Navy had contacted me to find out what had happened to the premium that the school miraculously managed to produce an IEP to support my daughter in English...

Without the CEA my children’s schooling and indeed their whole life chances would have been seriously impeded. We have had 13 service moves in 20 years, so being able to give my children stability in their education has been invaluable. If the CEA were to be abolished, my husband would leave the Marines immediately.

We had no problems with the very first school that our eldest attended since we were in the right area for the right time. We had no problems with a school place when serving abroad but our eldest daughter, diagnosed by the consultant paediatrician and local health visitor with Aspergers syndrome had little support at the forces school. On our return to the UK, our eldest had to go to boarding school—we got our next appointment location at the end of June for removal in mid August—we couldn’t leave a secondary school to chance for our eldest so she has had to go away since serving separated doesn’t work well for our marriage. Our youngest is at a low performing school (she was a year 5 entry) and whilst she is achieving to a degree, it’s not to the same level as before. She is following her sister away because we have 18 months left in this posting—PERHAPS—and we don’t want to gamble with her future. So, to keep our eligibility for CEAS (and we do recognise it as a privilege) we know that we can be moved at a moment’s notice causing my job opportunities to shrink even more and we are criticised by non military friends for our choices. Can’t win! I need to find more information on accessing support for the eldest and possibly for the youngest who is showing signs of dyslexia. This is not instantly straightforward. We don’t want to disadvantage our kids and find it hugely frustrating that we are criticised in trying to help the kids settle...

My Granddaughter is to start early years nursery school and I have been advised that schools receive extra funding for service personnel children.

Service children should have the same opportunity as “civilian” children—the problem is not enough places at good schools for either category in many locations. My step-children do not live with us and are therefore excluded from the pupil premium but spent their primary school years changing schools frequently—they get no extra help in their secondary school to help “recover” from that disruption, nor the impact on them when their Dad deploys.

CEA provides an ideal footing to assist in supporting your child’s education whilst maintaining the ability to provide a stable education environment for your children. However this comes at a high cost for parental relationships with added pressures of frequent moves because “you are signed up” and receiving CEA. Having moved five times in six years due to service commitments, and nine times in 14 years my children are now struggling to identify where home actually is. Trying to establish roots and balance education needs comes at a high cost when in the service, to all relationships within the family.

I agree that Service Children have a right to the same standard of education as non Service personnel. However, I don’t think this should MOD funded CEA. It eats up to much of the MOD budget for too few benefactors. Service Personnel should have priority access to state funded schools.

My school seems to have no idea how to allocate the service pupils premium to our children, and cannot provide adequate informal to what the funds have been used for in previous financial years.

All service personnel children should have the best in education with schools passing on any information to the new schools for the children. This I feel should benefit the progress of learning and help for the children and their progress through their educational years with help and support to each and every child’s needs.

While I would never wish to see any child disadvantaged in their educational needs, I don’t think that children of Service personnel should receive preferential treatment over and above their non-Service contemporaries. While I appreciate there is an impact on the quality of family life due to Service circumstances, provisions can be made for the Service person (rather than the whole family) to be inconvenienced—by means of “compassionate” assignments or financial assistance—rather than having to relocate as a family unit and thus disrupting access to education. If a family chooses to take this option, that is their decision, rather than a mandated requirement of the Service. Non-Service families also face disruption due to the working circumstances of the breadwinner(s) but in the whole, their companies do not feel the need to provide a relocation package or educational grants for their children. The choice to have children while serving is a family decision, not a primary consideration for the Armed Forces. Harsh, I agree, but personal sacrifices have to be made.

State education in Portsmouth is poor and forced us to send our children to private school. When abroad this included boarding school. I find it difficult to understand why someone cannot go to boarding school and claim CSA just for 6th form. My daughter has never been to boarding school having accompanied me abroad; should I be posted abroad again I would be unable to claim CSA for her. This is wrong. As a local school governor, the provision of extra money for service children is to be congratulated. As a parent of older children, the provision of child care used to be poor and difficult to arrange. It is pleasing to see Creches on base and much better provision overall. However poor standards of education still abound in Portsmouth and finding a good level of state education remains a challenge.

Main concerns noted by the RN & RM Children’s Fund, I have looked at the problems of the children where the parent is serving as their problems are not quite the same as those of the ex -serving population. During the year the RN & RM Children’s Fund assisted 530 children of Serving personnel and 598 of ex-serving personnel, these were new beneficiaries during the year 2012–13.

During the year the children’s fund assisted 393 children (of serving personnel) who had some form of disability or illness. Managing life in the service and coping with children who need numerous hospital appointments and extra care is truly hard, especially if the family swings to being a one parent family when mother or father are away, hard to think of a solution but the financial pressure (even with disability allowance) is great particularly if there are other siblings.

Childcare continues to be a problem, a young single mother may find herself paying £600 of her net pay of £800 for childcare, it is very hard to budget on £200 per month and mum will quickly fall into debt and then need charitable support. The RN & RM Children’s Fund assisted 133 children with childcare during the year.

CEA—the tightening of the rules has definitely caused some problems and some bitterness, especially where two men in the same type of work find that one of them is likely to move and is therefore eligible and the other is deemed unlikely to move and is therefore not eligible. We believe that people are very nervous of embarking on the CEA route now and there is a definite feeling that this allowance is going to be phased out. The children’s fund have supported 36 children with educational costs 12 of these were cases where the father was no longer eligible for CEA, but it was in the child’s best interest to remain at the school.

The RN & RM Children’s Fund is working with Naval Welfare and the NFF to provide support for the families of those deployed both while the serving person is away and when they return. An increase in Operational Stress Reaction has been noted making the return to family life more difficult and therefore the impact on the children confusing. We have noticed a steady rise in the number of separations and divorces where there has been regular deployment.

The RN & RM Children’s Fund has been assisting a number of widows with finding suitable education for their children, we have not been made aware of the Bereavement Scholarship Scheme, however most schools will now offer a large bursary to enable children to either remain at the school they were attending on the death of their father or move to a more suitable school in the changed circumstances.

All three Service families’ federations have been asked to submit evidence for the Defence Select Committee inquiry into educating the children of Service personnel. Here is some feedback. The effectiveness of the various financial support schemes for all Service families; Overseas Preschool specifically Kindergarten. Typically in the UK I would receive 15 hours free per week. So to boost the hours up to a standard school week, it was costing me an extra £250 (approx 2,500 per year) per month and I was paying less tax due the mod childcare voucher scheme. Here in Brussels the British School in Brussels currently charges approx 7,500 euro per school year (critically not per annum) currently I can reclaim the fees on a termly basis. My question is why do I as a Petty Officer, in an area of Europe that is notoriously expensive where I have lost approx 4–5,000 euro per year in loa, have to pay these costs up front? Unacceptable in my view. Many thanks.

My husband is a seagoing sailor with 16 years of service. During that time he has had one shore job and apart from courses, has spent the rest of his time in deployed ships. A typical year would see my husband away for three months of disjointed pre-deployment sea trials and work ups and six months at sea. In that time he has missed over half of the children’s birthdays, their first steps, first words, learning to ride bikes, learning to swim, the list goes on. As little children the boys took this in their stride and their mood seemed to be a reflection of how I was coping and how much time I could give them. They didn’t seem to expect Daddy to be there all the time and were just delighted when he was.

The boys are now at school and my poor husband missed all the first days, including William starting at Boarding School. As I type my husband still hasn’t seen him in his new uniform, six months on. The children are becoming young men and prefer the company of men; they now ask about my husband often, when is he coming home? and worse of all, will he come home? The emotional impact of having a parent coming and going is significant. Six months when you are six seems like forever. When this is coupled with an uncertainty about how long the family will stay in one place and when and where the next post will be, it is extremely unsettling.

We have had a positive experience of the state sector with our children at infant level. The school is well used to service families and is accommodating about time off to visit relations and Daddy of course. They have used the Pupil Premium to set up a group for families, using an established SEAL (social and emotional aspects of learning) framework. It consisted of evening sessions where children and adults addressed the same issues in separate groups and looked at how to talk about and cope with them. It also served as a lasting network of support for families experiencing the same difficulties. From my experience as a teacher and a parent, I don’t think that the possibilities offered by the Pupil Premium are widely understood, this may account for its poor use and uptake.

Our eldest son has learning difficulties (namely dyslexia and high functioning autism). This exaggerates the effects of change and instability. William has found his father coming and going, together the uncertainty about his future very distressing, at times becoming quite withdrawn. We like to spend as much time as possible together as a family (and are therefore “mobile”), this is likely to result in several moves in the future. For this reason we are claiming CEA for William. So for William, who has a Statement of Special Educational Needs, CEA also means Continuity of Specialist Support, as his extra help (occupational therapy, speech and language therapy), all come from within his school. We now know and can tell William with certainty, that he will be attending this school until the end of this academic phase. This is a great relief and comfort to us all. He is flourishing and the specialist help and added support from the other children he lives with is transforming him. He now gives regular eye contact and has become very socially confident and independent.

We were very anxious about applying for this allowance. Like others I have spoken to, we were worried that we would not be eligible and that we might have to pay the fees back if our situation changed. We are also still very concerned that the allowance may be withdrawn or that it may not be available for our other children, who will then be forced to move from pillar to post with no chance of continuity of education. The nature of Service Families is a sense of duty and the question of whether we deserve to take this allowance for our children weighed heavily on us. Sending a child away is an agonizing decision and is not to be taken lightly. Accepting CEA has given us a lifeline and helps to reconcile the sacrifice and compromise that our lifestyle necessitates.

One of the most significant effects on a child whose father is away is the mother’s mental health. I know that my children’s mood and behavior deteriorates dramatically when I am having a “difficult week”. The normal problems continue when a parent is away and like Atlas, the remaining parent carries it all. Trying to maintain a career, caring for sick relatives, bereavement, all whilst dealing with the emotional well being of small and unsettled children can be exhausting to the point of desperation. My support comes from my military friends and neighbours and this is possible as I live in a military quarter. Before children, when we lived in our own home, I was completely removed from this support and was not aware of any that was available to me. There is help available, I don’t think that it is widely known about and there seems to be a stigma attached to asking for it. The obvious way to spread this information is via the ships and my husband does pass on HIVE newsletters to me. The ships are working lean manned and at full stretch and it would not be reasonable to expect them to oversee welfare beyond the ships company themselves.

February 2013