Defence CommitteeWritten evidence from Appleford School

Background

Appleford School is a specialist co-educational school for pupils with dyslexia and associated learning difficulties with an age range of 7–16 in Shrewton Village, Salisbury, and Wiltshire. There are currently 65 pupils on the school roll, of which 26 are the children of armed forces personnel (40%). Appleford is registered with the DfE as a Specialist Residential School. All pupils at Appleford have an educational psychologists report and many (21–32%) have a statement of Special Educational Needs. In a recent Independent Schools Inspectorate Inspection Appleford was graded as Excellent.

1. Specific Comments:

(a)Current MOD Policy. MOD policy is that children of members of the armed forces have the same standard of access to education as any other UK citizen in the area in which they live, given the requirement for mobility. Comment—we believe that children of servicemen currently are better looked after for Special Educational Needs (SEN) provision than many of their civilian counterparts. Our evidence is mainly drawn from our local knowledge of the Larkhill, Buford and Tidworth garrisons, the pupils drawn from these garrisons receive much better SEN than they would in the Wiltshire Council schools. Access to SEN is severely limited due to cash and SEN policy constraints in Wiltshire Council, parents frequently have to wait for considerable periods of time before the can have their children statement, then very limited levels of SEN support are available—frequently this is restricted to one to one support delivered by learning support assistance in Wiltshire schools. In comparison military parents with mobility certificates are able to access via SENA(SP) superior levels of SEN delivered at Appleford by highly qualified teachers (not LSAs) supported by LSAs for English and some math’s classes. At Appleford pupils also are able to have direct intervention for Occupational Therapy, Speech and Language Therapy and psychotherapy—some ¾ of the current placements for psychotherapy as an example are taken up with children of military families.

(b)Future MOD Policy. In the future we understand that many of the parents of children with SENA will lose their mobility certificates. This will mean that their children will no longer be able to access SEN provision (paid for by the military). Comments—We believe that in the future that the children of members of the armed forces will not receive the same access to SEN education as another citizen in the area in which they live. This is based on the fact that a serviceman/woman has little control of where they live and therefore that a post code lottery will occur over access to SEN. We are already aware that access to SEN is a post code lottery, eg Wiltshire Council is poor and has to be hard fought for—normally in SEN Tribunal, Hampshire is much better and Warwickshire is much the best of three local authorities for SEN provision. Please note there is evidence that there is an 18–24 month regression for SEN pupils when they move between school—this is important when a pupil is forced to move schools when is it found that there current school is unable to provide for their needs.

(c)Annex A. At Annex A are two comparison cases for children of servicemen—both Army.

2. Conclusion. The major issue is that in the future there definitely will not be a level playing field between the servicemen and their civilian counterparts.

	Current Rules	Future Rules
Child1	Child 1 is chronically dyslexic, as was her father, her father lost his entitlement to SENA(Sp)	Child 1 now attends a local secondary school where her SEN needs are not being fully met.
Child 2	Child 2 has chronic dyslexia and suffers from an attachment disorder which frequently results in behavioral issues, Mother has a mobility certificate,	Mother may lose her mobility certificate and lose entitlement to SENA (Sp). Mother has applied for statutory assessment which has been refused by Wiltshire Council; mother will have to fight to have the case resolved. If the Statutory Assessment is not accepted Child 2 will be forced to attend a school with low support levels for his needs.

David King
Headmaster

March 2013