Defence Committee - Minutes of EvidenceHC 941

HOUSE OF COMMONS

ORAL EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE THE

DEFENCE COMMITTEE

THE ARMED FORCES COVENANT IN ACTION?

PART 3: EDUCATING THE CHILDREN OF SERVICE PERSONNEL

TUESDAY 16 APRIL 2013

GAVIN BARLOW, MARTIN BULL, OLIVIA DENSON, KATHRYN FORSYTH and COLONEL CLIVE KNIGHTLEY

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Defence Committee

on Tuesday 16 April 2013

Members present:

Mr James Arbuthnot (Chair)

Mr Julian Brazier

Mr Jeffrey M. Donaldson

Mr Dai Havard

Mr Adam Holloway

Mrs Madeleine Moon

Penny Mordaunt

Sandra Osborne

Sir Bob Russell

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Gavin Barlow, Director, Service Personnel Policy, Ministry of Defence, Martin Bull, Assessment, Curriculum and General Qualifications, Department for Education, Olivia Denson, Children’s Education Advisory Service, Ministry of Defence, Kathryn Forsyth, Chief Executive, Service Children’s Education, Ministry of Defence, and Colonel Clive Knightley, Acting Director, Ministry of Defence Directorate Children and Young People, gave evidence.

Chair: Welcome to all of you and thank you for coming to give evidence to this inquiry on educating the children of Service personnel. Mr Barlow, would you like to begin by introducing everyone, please-or is that a tall order?

Gavin Barlow: I might ask them to chip in as we go. I am Gavin Barlow, the Director of Service Personnel Policy. I have responsibilities for policy on the Armed Forces Covenant, the New Employment Model and Armed Forces remuneration, including allowances, among other things.

Policy and delivery responsibilities for the education of Service children are largely delegated by the Ministry of Defence head office to the Army, so I have brought a team from Army Command to provide some much needed subject matter expertise and a representative from the Department for Education, reflecting its considerable responsibilities in this area. May I ask the team to introduce themselves from left to right?

Olivia Denson: Good afternoon. My name is Olivia Denson. I work for the Directorate of Children and Young People and I am also the head of the Service Children’s Education Advisory Service.

Colonel Knightley: My name is Clive Knightley and I am the acting Director of the Directorate for Children and Young People, so my key responsibility is the MOD-level policy for children and young people in defence.

Martin Bull: Hello, my name is Martin Bull. I am from the Department for Education and am the chap who wrote the education chapter in the original Armed Forces Covenant. I have general responsibility to make sure that we meet our commitments in that.

Kathryn Forsyth: I am Kathryn Forsyth, the acting Chief Executive of Service Children’s Education. My responsibility is for 33 overseas schools worldwide and for child care for nought to three-year-olds as of 1 April this year.

Q356 Chair: Thank you all for coming. Please do not feel that you all need to answer every question; if you do, we will be here until breakfast. In theory, we have less than an hour, although in practice it will probably run on a little.

I will begin. How many Service children are there?

Gavin Barlow: It is difficult to be precise; we quote different figures in different places, I think. It is about 64,000.

Colonel Knightley: It is 64,500, based on the figures from last year.

Q357 Chair: Who collates those figures?

Colonel Knightley: Those are figures that we have collated from the information available on the joint personnel administration management information system, figures held by the Department for Education and their devolved colleagues, and the numbers for those educated outside the UK, for whom the MOD obviously has responsibility, directly or indirectly. Obviously, those are the figures that we own ourselves.

Q358 Chair: Have you brought in new systems to keep track of the number?

Colonel Knightley: Last year, an additional member of staff was allocated to look at this particular issue.

Q359 Chair: Why last year? We identified the absence of the figure in 2006. Why did it take you until 2012?

Colonel Knightley: At the risk of being evasive, I was not in the directorate at that time and I cannot find any evidence to explain why that person was brought in and allocated that task only last year.

Olivia Denson: The DfE did start to count Service children in state schools in 2008-so only two years after the House of Commons Defence Committee made its point. They count the children in England.

Q360 Chair: A two-year delay is better than a six-year delay; that is true. Are you confident that the figure is accurate?

Colonel Knightley: It is sufficiently accurate for our purposes. We need to know the broad figures overall so, for example, we can give those figures to the Department for Education so that when they are calculating the bill for the Service pupil premium, they have a reasonably accurate figure for what the bill is likely to be.

We can rely on those broad figures because when we deal with specific issues, where the number is of critical importance-i.e. when we are moving large numbers of Service families and their children to new or different locations-we generate the very accurate figures and maintain them throughout that process.

So when the headquarters of the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps moved back from Rheindahlen to Innsworth in Gloucester, the detailed figures were generated from Kathryn’s organisation, and kept up to date, so that we were able to brief Gloucester county council in great detail on the numbers, age groups and other detail on the children coming back. We have done that as well for the recent move of Army units from Waterbeach up to the former RAF Kinloss. It is an ongoing process for more troops coming out of Germany in the early rebasing announcement into the Stafford area, and that is the process that we will use for the rest of the rebasing.

Where we need accurate information, we can generate it and keep it up to date for that. We have that general figure for broad planning and we can generate the detailed figures when we need them.

Q361 Chair: So you have the details only on an ad hoc basis?

Colonel Knightley: I think saying "ad hoc" is probably a tad harsh; it is about when we require that data. It would be wasteful to maintain a level of accuracy of that data when we do not use or need that accuracy in our day-to-day work. It is the general understanding of the broad numbers and then focusing in when there is a specific requirement where we absolutely must know an accurate figure for the number and all the other details of those Service children.

Chair: Thank you.

Q362 Mrs Moon: I would like to talk about the Armed Forces Covenant, which states specifically that children of Service personnel should receive the same standard of and access to education as any other UK citizen. Do you think that Service children are disadvantaged compared with other children?

Gavin Barlow: As the requirement for the Covenant recognised, the position of Service personnel and their families certainly has the potential to create disadvantage, so we need to take action at least to level the playing field. That applies particularly when we are dealing with the issue of the high levels of mobility of Service children. We think we have made good progress in reducing disadvantage, but there is clearly more to do.

Q363 Mrs Moon: What more do you need to do?

Gavin Barlow: As one example, we have relatively recently introduced the Service pupil premium and we know that that has been well taken up by schools across England. But we need to do more work both to identify and promote best practice and assess the impact of what is happening.

As officials and Ministers have said to the Committee on a number of occasions, the Covenant is a work in progress-a process, rather than an event. We have taken some major steps towards reducing disadvantage, but we need to monitor what is going on and to be ready to improve if we can.

Q364 Mrs Moon: So the greatest disadvantage that you would identify is the fact that you are not closely monitoring the Service pupil premium?

Gavin Barlow: No, I would go on to say that we would also expect through the implementation of the New Employment Model to do quite a lot to address the underlying problems associated with Service life. We will, through the employment model and the opportunities offered by rebasing, reduce the level of turbulence that Service families experience. I am thinking particularly of the Army; when it occurs, the withdrawal from Germany will of itself reduce the level of turbulence and challenge that is currently presented to those Service families as they move to and from overseas locations.

Q365 Mrs Moon: In relation to the continuity of education allowance, are the rights to move school the same as anyone else’s in the UK who is purchasing private education? If you are unhappy with the school-with the care that the school provides-do you have the same right to move?

Gavin Barlow: It is absolutely possible to make a case to move for good reasons, but we take the view that the continuity of education allowance is there to do what it says. Any parent has the right to buy private education if they wish to on any basis they wish and to move schools as often as they want, and that applies to Service children as well. But clearly if the Service parent wants to make use of continuity of education allowance, there is an expectation from us that that is there to provide educational continuity. So there is a fairly high bar on Service parents committing to that at the outset and maintaining it. But clearly if there is a good reason for moving a child, that is possible. [Interruption.]

Q366 Mrs Moon: Very quickly, as we have to go to a vote, may I ask you to provide the Committee with the grounds and the reasons for a right to move a child who receives continuity of education allowance, in particular where a parent is concerned in relation to sexual abuse or sexual assault on that child? Could you provide that to the Committee please?

Gavin Barlow: Olivia, would you like to comment?

Olivia Denson: I can say something more about that, actually.

Chair: We now have to suspend the Committee. I do not know how many votes there will be, but each vote normally takes 15 minutes. If Members could get back as quickly as possible, I would be grateful. I apologise for this, but democratic requirements require it.

Sitting suspended for Divisions in the House.

On resuming-

Chair: We do now have a quorum, and I propose to start the session again, despite the small number of colleagues in the Committee. I hope you will not take that amiss, but we will have some fantastic answers even if we may be rather short on questioners. I am sorry about that.

Q367 Mrs Moon: Going back to the continuity of education allowance and the right to move, may I ask that when you provide the written evidence that we have asked for, you also send us details of how many requests to move you have received in the past 10 years?

Olivia Denson: Ten years?

Q368 Mrs Moon: Yes, and the reasons for the requests to move, how many of those requests were granted and the reasons for either refusing or agreeing to those moves.

Q369 Chair: If you could answer that, we will be grateful. I must admit that it was the first time I had heard that the continuity of education allowance involved value judgments by the Ministry of Defence between different schools. We may come back to that, because we have a lot more questions on the continuity of education allowance.

Moving on to a completely different issue, reports have indicated that the main issue affecting Service children’s achievements is mobility. What is being done to reduce the frequency of moves for Service families?

Gavin Barlow: Clive, do you want to start off with the short-term view on how we manage mobility at the moment? Then I might say something about the New Employment Model.

Colonel Knightley: Sure. All the single-service assignment authorities always attempt to move families at a time that causes the least turbulence to them, and they always attempt to give at least four months’ warning. Inevitably, though, operational necessity, the unforeseen and frequently the unforeseeable, the knock-on effects of one move dragging through another and, last but not least, sometimes the choice of the Service parent him or herself, do not always allow that to happen. Even though that policy is in place, the reality is that there is still a lot of movement and turbulence, and it does not always occur at the time of the year that is best suited to schools admissions for pupils.

Chair: Indeed. We will come on to that.

Gavin Barlow: And clearly, in the longer term we have aspirations to move mobility down-to increase stability, if I speak English. One key area that will take some time to develop is the aspiration under the new employment model to develop new career structures, which the currently most mobile groups, particularly officers, will involve a greater degree of streaming than is currently the case. More officers will be offered more stable careers. But mobility will always be a feature of Service life-there will always be greater mobility requirements in the Services than you would typically find in other organisations-and we will continue to need policies that enable us to manage that and manage the impact on people.

Q370 Chair: What is the time scale for these changes-for example, for the New Employment Model having the effect you are talking about?

Gavin Barlow: The bulk of the New Employment Model changes will not really start to come into effect until after 2015. Particularly for the Army, I do not think we will reach the broad, sunlit uplands of the future, more stable model until we have completed the process of withdrawing the bulk of forces from Germany. That whole process in itself, never mind our career management aspirations and so on, will inevitably involve a lot of relocations, both from Germany back to the UK and within the UK to make space. That will not just be within the Army, either, but it will also have an impact on the Air Force over that period. So there is a degree of instability coming, which we will have to plan for and manage as best we can.

Q371 Chair: You say "We will have to plan for".

Gavin Barlow: We are planning for it.

Q372 Chair: Do you have plans in place to ensure that local authorities will have spaces for those children coming back from Germany?

Gavin Barlow: Yes, indeed.

Q373 Chair: What sort of plans? Can you describe them to me?

Gavin Barlow: Clive, do you want to say something about that first? Then I will ask Martin to come in.

Colonel Knightley: Yes. Going back to my earlier answer on pupil numbers, once the ministerial announcement of the detail of the rebasing occurred, we were then able to start generating the first tranche of the more detailed figures that I referred to earlier. Because it is a move from Germany, the bulk of that work fell to Kathryn’s organisation, which allowed her to pass those planning figures to Martin for England, and through our other routes to the devolved equivalents, so they all have those figures.

Martin Bull: Absolutely. The important thing that we need to remember is that we have children who are coming between 2013 and 2017. What we have done is that the DFE has worked with Kathryn from Service Children’s Education, and we have looked at the number of children in primary and secondary school and what year they are coming back to England. We have then identified the local authorities that they are going to be coming to. Yesterday I spoke to the Minister, Elizabeth Truss, and she has agreed a set of actions, which will include writing to those local authorities to alert them in advance of the number of children we expect to return, and to try to work out ways in which we can support them through pupil funding in the years to come.

Q374 Chair: Oh, good, so you did this yesterday.

Martin Bull: Absolutely. I spoke to Elizabeth Truss yesterday.

Q375 Chair: Was it helpful that we had an inquiry today?

Martin Bull: It was helpful, but this particular work was done a few weeks back, so we have been pre-planning. It was not just for this particular meeting.

Q376 Chair: Right. And how do you consult with local authorities on finding those increased school places?

Martin Bull: We kind of work two years ahead, so two years ahead the local authorities know the number of children we expect to be in a particular local authority in a particular cohort. Of course, because we have new children coming, we are going to go back and have a look at what we provided for those local authorities, and see whether we can provide additional funding to help them with high mobility numbers, using the numbers that we have just found out are coming over from Germany back to England. We do this by writing to the local authorities and speaking to the funding teams. Our individual teams, which work on admissions, funding and all the other areas, speak to the local authority contacts to make sure that everybody is very informed about the numbers arriving.

Q377 Chair: Okay, thank you. Kathryn Forsyth, is there anything you’d like to add to that?

Kathryn Forsyth: I don’t think so, no. Martin’s covered everything.

Chair: We like that sort of answer. It is not just local authorities, is it?

Q378 Mrs Moon: Are you having the same conversation where bases are being closed and whole units are moving to another area and another base? Are you having similar conversations there?

Olivia Denson: Yes, those conversations do take place, and they take place across the border as well, with Scotland, where there will be some changes. Yes, we do have those conversations to assist and support in the planning in those areas as well.

Q379 Mrs Moon: And in Wales?

Olivia Denson: And in Wales.

Q380 Mrs Moon: We had some evidence from families saying that they found difficulties in finding schools when they were moved at short notice and during the school term. How are you going to improve the situation?

Olivia Denson: A number of actions have already been taken to improve that. Inevitably, there will always be some difficulties for families that move-it happens for civilian families as well-when they move out of the normal round. Short notice, of course, does not help, but in fact, in working with the DFE in the code on admissions, they have made some changes to that to allow Service personnel to use their notice of posting as a means of obtaining dialogue with the local authority about a school place, instead of having to wait for an address. At the same time, we have the Children’s Education Advisory Service, which provides some specific advice and information to families who are in that position, in terms of accessing school places. That Service is successful in terms of the support it gives.

If you would like some figures, last year, for example, we supported 198 families with appeals for school places moving out of the normal round, 143 of which were successful.

Q381 Mrs Moon: So obviously you monitor the numbers of children moved at short notice and in-term moves.

Olivia Denson: The ones that contact us for help and advice. I am sure that there are others who do not use us for that necessarily. They do not have to, but we keep data about the ones that contact us and the ones that we support and help.

Q382 Mrs Moon: So you do not have data on how many children are being impacted.

Olivia Denson: No, not exclusively.

Q383 Mr Brazier: What proportion of local authorities has now accepted the notice of posting in lieu of a fixed address? That does seem to be-representing an existing base-the absolute key to it.

Olivia Denson: All the local authorities have had to because it is part of the legislation. However, the issue for Service families is that when they move, they may be moved to a location to work, but they could be housed eventually some distance from where they will actually be working. That is the problem with using the notice of posting. It might enable them to approach a local authority, but when they finally get their housing allocation, they could be living somewhere else, which is not as close to the school as they thought. In a sense, that problem does not always make it easier for them to get their places. The legislation is helpful, but only so far.

Q384 Mrs Moon: What difficulties do you experience transferring Service children within the devolved Administrations?

Olivia Denson: The admissions legislation outside of England is very different in all areas, and it is actually a lot easier for children to get places, because they still use the catchment area of schools-taking the number of children that live in the catchment-in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Q385 Mrs Moon: Do you find it easier to move children in the devolved Administrations?

Olivia Denson: We do not move the children, but when they move, it is easier for them to get places in the devolved Administrations.

Q386 Mrs Moon: You have two members of staff-one in Scotland and one in north Yorkshire. Why did you choose north Yorkshire to talk to devolved Administrations?

Olivia Denson: Sorry, we do not have two members of staff in those areas. We have two members of peripatetic staff who are based in England. Because of where they live-they work from home-one focuses on the north of England and Scotland and one on the south and the rest of England. They provide support across that divide. We just have two peripatetic staff.

Q387 Mrs Moon: It says one is employed in north Yorkshire by North Yorkshire council.

Olivia Denson: That is for a different project. That is a separate, one-off project.

Q388 Mrs Moon: Can you explain what that project is?

Olivia Denson: Yes. It is to look at the transfer of records and information about Service children when they move. It is a year-long project to come up with statutory guidance that will be used to produce the information base that is needed for schools when children move.

Q389 Chair: That is an issue of records then, is it?

Olivia Denson: It is records-transfer of information about children, transfer of records, yes. That post is there for that.

Chair: I see, okay. That is helpful, thank you.

Q390 Mr Donaldson: Significant numbers of Service families are affected by parents serving in a conflict area-Afghanistan being one example. What does the MOD do to reduce the impact on the children of such families?

Colonel Knightley: If we start with the Service person himself or herself, clearly the now very comprehensive pre-deployment training and preparation for the deploying Service person and his or her family covers all areas of welfare. Included in that is advice on the impact that the deployment is likely to have. The emotional cycle of deployment is a technique that we use. As well as providing that information to the parents, we importantly strongly advise them-we cannot force them-to let the school where their children are and any other youth organisation that they are involved in know that the serving parent is going to be deployed and over what period of time.

It is probably important to mention that not all parents will make that contact, some because they simply fail to do so and others as a conscious choice because they, for whatever reason, do not want the fact that they are deploying to be exposed to others. As long as parents let such organisations know, that is where we look to see the impact of various things. Key among those is the Service pupil premium and equivalents elsewhere-where they exist-but, more importantly, is the MOD’s £3 million fund, which allows those schools, when they know that they have children with impending deployments, to focus on the additional pastoral care to take them through.

Q391 Mr Donaldson: In the event that tragedy strikes and a soldier is killed on active Service and a child is in a fee-paying school-as I understand it the current arrangements are that the income of the soldier ceases with immediate effect-what arrangements are in place to support families in those circumstances?

Gavin Barlow: Pay ceases, but other forms of income then kick in through the pension and the compensation scheme. Clive, do you want to say any more about how that experience happens in practice?

Colonel Knightley: It is not my area of expertise, but you can talk to the general-

Olivia Denson: In general terms, we do have a benevolence information package available. A number of schools have already made it clear that in the circumstances that you described they would continue to fund a child, usually to the end of a stage of education. We have a number of welfare contacts that can actually have that dialogue with a school if a situation such as that arises.

Q392 Mr Donaldson: What do you mean by "stage of education"?

Olivia Denson: The end of a key stage, such as year 7, year 11 or whatever. Generally, where we know that they will make that kind of provision, the schools will step in and do it. There are a number of other sources of funding if funding is not immediately available from the school, but we will then support and help to find appropriate placing, if it is necessary for some reason, for the child to change. In most instances, however, the school will respond positively and keep the child until the end of the stage of education.

Gavin Barlow: Indeed, continuity of education allowance is also maintained until the end of the stage of education in the event of a death.

Q393 Mr Donaldson: It is only anecdotal, but I dealt with the case of a constituent and there seemed to be a gap. In the end, it was the Army Benevolent Fund-the soldiers’ charity-that stepped in and plugged the gap, so I welcome what you say and I hope that the gap has been covered in terms of at least some provision until other measures are put in place. In this particular case, I think it took an inordinate amount of time for the pension and other things to kick in, so there was an immediate loss of income with absolutely nothing in place to cover this kind of thing. I have noted what you said.

What, if any, involvement do you have with schools?

Gavin Barlow: In what circumstances?

Mr Donaldson: In terms of the practical support that you need to give children of Service personnel who are on operational deployment.

Martin Bull: Perhaps I could answer that question. That is what the Service premium is for. When the Service premium came in, alongside the pupil premium, it was very much designed to meet social and emotional needs as well as dealing with mobility issues. It is very different from the pupil premium, which is purely about disadvantage. Service children are not disadvantaged in the traditional sense. They perform better than the national average. They do well in GCSEs. The reason why we have the Service premium in place is that they can experience differences in schools and in their family environment that lead to them feeling upset and distressed. The Service premium has been used to provide emotional support-pastoral support-providing help when perhaps mum or dad are at war and they have anxieties and concerns; and for death in service, supporting the child and being conscious that the child is going through a difficult time. It is very much there to provide the cost that comes with having somebody to sit with a child and look after the child. We have some very good written case studies from the first year, when the Service premium was only £250, where schools have used the money wisely to provide exactly that sort of care.

Mr Donaldson: Chairman, it would be useful if we could have a note on the arrangements in place to cover the gap between soldiers’ income ceasing in the event of death and other measures kicking in to provide support in circumstances where because of the nature of their Service their children attend fee-paying schools.

Q394 Chair: Would it be possible for you to provide us with such a note?

Gavin Barlow: Yes, we could do that.

Chair: Thank you very much.

Q395 Mrs Moon: You talked about the Service premium, the £250 that is there to help with the social and emotional needs of children. From my background reading, I understand that the money that goes to the devolved Administration in Wales, which according to my figures is close to £250,000, does not actually follow the child.

Martin Bull: It is only in England-

Mrs Moon: What can we do to ensure that Service children who are being educated in the devolved Administrations have their social and emotional needs dealt with, and that the money we provide to do that reaches those children?

Olivia Denson: We have a number of networking groups in the devolved Administrations, and they have each considered, and are considering, whether they need to replicate the pupil premium. The Welsh group is considering that. It is a Government Committee. At the same time, the £3 million fund is provided on a bidded basis to schools that have that kind of need. Many of our schools in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland benefit from the £3 million fund to support things such as deployment. The Scottish system has decided that it does not need to replicate the pupil premium. It has other ways of meeting the emotional needs of children. Northern Ireland already has a premium, and the Welsh group is considering whether it needs to replicate that. It will make that decision based on its own policies.

Q396 Mrs Moon: Has Scotland decided that it does not need the money?

Olivia Denson: It uses the money from the £3 million fund. It does not delegate money as a pupil premium to schools. The allocation of resources to schools in Scotland is done differently from that in England.

Mr Holloway: I just want to back up what Jeffrey was saying. I have met a number of people where the gap was being filled by friends or regimental funds.

Q397 Chair: We will get a note.

The £3 million fund is not devoted entirely to solving the problem of the transfer of records, is it?

Gavin Barlow: No.

Colonel Knightley: No, not at all.

Q398 Chair: Why is there still a problem with the transfer of records? We identified the problem in 2006. Ofsted identified the problem in 2011. Last month we took evidence from head teachers who say that there is still a problem. Why is there still a problem?

Martin Bull: There is a document called the common transfer file, by which schools have to transfer information within seven days when a child moves. It contains information about the pupil in terms of their educational attainment and where they are in their key stages, and that does tend to be completed. Records from overseas schools to maintained education seem to work reasonably well-I think you would agree, Kathryn-with records going back as good as the teachers who are completing the particular forms to allow the information to travel.

Where you have the problem is with the additional information that comes with a child-things like the portfolio of evidence, the examples of their work and the stuff that really tells you about how well a child is doing and that the teacher needs in order to make the right assessments when they arrive. It is difficult to transfer large files, because that is quite costly, so parents are often required to take the file with them when they move. Generally, my feedback is that that works well, but on occasion it does not work so well, because mum and dad are packing lorries, and putting their children in cars and getting on planes; a lot of other factors come into play, so it is not completely perfect.

A piece of work is going on, however, that Olivia might be able to enlighten us about; it is using money from the £3 million fund to do a piece of research that will look at having something that might support the common transfer fund-not to replace it, but perhaps enabling better transfer of records.

Olivia Denson: We have used a very small part of the £3 million fund to fund a project, which is one person working in North Yorkshire to do the necessary research. In the bid, we referred to the previous findings of the House of Commons Defence Committee and the Ofsted report, saying that the piece of work was essential for those reasons. He has done the research across the devolved Administrations as well; one of the problems is the different legislation for the needs of transfer documentation, so he has taken account of all the requirements across the devolved Administrations. He also sought advice and input from SCE and, in consultation with the schools he has worked with, he has now come up with draft guidance for schools on what needs to transfer and on what is really helpful to teachers about children when they move. It does not in any circumstance replace the local legislation, instead it is supplementing and adding to it. It is about making sure that the information is transferred quickly and directly between schools, possibly using CEAS as the postal interface when we do not know where children are going. One of the reasons why parents end up taking the files occasionally is that we do not always know where the children are actually going to be going to school, even if we know the area, for all the reasons we rehearsed earlier.

The idea is that everyone is signing up to this document, which will become a Service children’s transition document to be used universally by Service children.

Q399 Chair: At Tidworth, we were disappointed to find that an issue that we had identified in 2006, which was identified again by Ofsted in 2011, remained an issue last month. I am pleased that something is being done, although it is painfully slow.

Something else that has arisen is the issue of SATs results. As we understand it, the Department for Education does not recognise SATs results from schools overseas, even though the conditions are the same. Is that true?

Kathryn Forsyth: No. I have spoken to Karen, who was one of our deputy heads in Service Children’s Education and who I believe gave you the evidence. What she was talking about was the RAISEonline document that is used for Ofsted. I am not sure where the disconnect is. Our information goes to the Department for Education-it is recognised-but what was not happening was that the information was then transferred to a RAISEonline document that Ofsted use for school inspections, which is helpful in measuring progress.

Q400 Chair: But the end result is that people feel that the SATs results are not recognised in this country.

Martin Bull: There was a glitch in the data in one particular year when this happened. SCE scores have a serial code, a number, like other local authorities; in this one particular year, there was a glitch when the data were not transferred to RAISEonline. The problem has been resolved and will not happen again, but that is where the information about SATs not being recognised came from.

Chair: If you recognise the problem and have put in place something to ensure its resolution, let us move on to special educational needs.

Q401 Mrs Moon: The 2006 report from the Committee identified particular problems for families with children with special educational needs. One problem that still seems to exist is local authorities recognising previous schools’ statementing processes. What can be done to ensure that Service families’ children who have statements do not need to start the assessment process all over again?

Olivia Denson: It is part of the legislative process, and there are a number of things that we have done in the interim to ease that. Inevitably, there will always be difficulties when children with special educational needs move, because the educational needs are contextual. It is about where the child is and how they relate to their peer group; their needs may be different in another location.

Local authorities do recognise other local authorities’ assessments and statements, but they may not make provision to meet those needs in the same way as the previous authority was doing. Sometimes they do not explain it very well to the family who are on the receiving end. However, if a family let us know that they have a problem in that way, we will always provide support and advice to them at a number of levels-in terms of simple advice and information about what they can do; sometimes it is more complex in that we have a case meeting with them and the school or with the local authority; and we will ultimately go to appeal or tribunal if there is outstanding resistance to meeting the needs of that child.

Q402 Mrs Moon: Can I ask about your procedures in relation to safeguarding children, and in particular safeguarding children with special educational needs? Do you have standards that schools are required to comply with, both where you have continuity of education allowance and where the schools are within the military school system, to ensure that where there are allegations they are reported to the local authority’s safeguarding children boards or follow the safeguarding of children process?

Colonel Knightley: On the first point, just to be absolutely clear, the Ministry of Defence has a near statutory responsibility where we are acting in lieu of a local authority overseas in delivering education and other child services. In overseas locations, we hold the responsibility for all the safeguarding. We stand up, we have our own local safeguarding children boards, and we have an assured process that delivers it. Within the UK, that statutory responsibility lies with the local authority or equivalent in the area, and we have no statutory powers to investigate or take action, but clearly we have the same responsibilities as any other citizen or organisation who becomes aware of an issue that needs to be raised promptly with the appropriate authorities. Olivia, who gets involved in that process, can put some flesh on those bones.

Olivia Denson: If we are made aware of an allegation or concern, we approach the local authority concerned. It is their decision whether they take any further action or investigate it. We always ask a family who make any allegations to us-bear in mind that our information usually comes from Service families-to put them in writing to us. We do not wait for that while we proceed; we advise them about what to do while we make the referral to the local authority ourselves. It is then up to the local authority whether they investigate the allegation and what they do about it. We remain involved and engaged with them while they do that, but frequently they choose not to go beyond that point and investigate. If they choose to investigate, there are obviously all sorts of protocols that come into place in terms of their responsibilities with schools, and ours as well.

In a situation where there are serious safeguarding concerns and we are anxious about the well-being of children in a setting, we suspend the school from the list of schools that families can go to. From that point on, no Service child using CEA would be admitted to that school. Families with children already there are offered the opportunity to move their children without loss of entitlement or loss of funding. The thing swings into place very rapidly at that point. It is then up to the families whether they move their children or not.

The issue sometimes with children with special needs is finding an appropriate alternative place for them. Boarding and special independent schools that offer the sort of support that some of these children need are few and far between. None the less, we will not leave any child in a setting that is clearly not appropriate or right for them. That swings into place and we then work with the local authority by simply being involved in their meetings and so on to ensure that the support and the necessary information about the children is collected-the casework and everything else. We work with the local authority on improving and restoring the school to its proper status.

Q403 Mrs Moon: Could you provide the Committee with details of how many schools have been identified where families have come forward with concerns and allegations in relation to abuse, and could you tell us the form of that abuse? You do not need to name the schools. I appreciate that. Will you also tell us whether any children are still being funded in those schools and whether guidance has been issued to families who remain in the school?

Olivia Denson: Certainly there is one at the moment where that has been the case, and there has been one in my past that I can recall in doing this work.

Q404 Chair: There is one.

Olivia Denson: There is one at the moment.

Q405 Chair: And only one.

Olivia Denson: Only one at the moment where we have taken those steps.

Q406 Chair: Only one where you have taken those steps. Only one where you have decided that there is an issue of importance?

Olivia Denson: No, it is not us who make the decision. It is the local authority or the police that make the decision, not us. We are not the investigating authority. We make the referrals to the investigating authorities. They might investigate and say there is no question to answer. There have been other allegations brought to our attention, but one of the issues here is that sometimes families will make allegations based on their own view of a situation, which, when it is then further investigated, does not hold up as a safeguarding concern.

Q407 Mrs Moon: So there are other schools where-

Olivia Denson: Where there are allegations.

Q408 Mrs Moon: Could we have an indication of how many other schools? How many allegations against each of those schools? Also, whether they have been investigated and the time period from which you had the start of allegations to action being taken?

Chair: We are not looking for the names of the schools, because that would be a breach of all sorts of things.

Olivia Denson: Yes, I can provide that. How far back would you like me to go?

Q409 Mrs Moon: Ten years.

Olivia Denson: I don’t know if we have data for that.

Q410 Mrs Moon: They would sit side by side.

Olivia Denson: We have only been in existence since 2004, so I have nine years’ worth of data.

Chair: Thank you very much. Getting more deeply into it, the continuity of education allowance. Julian Brazier.

Q411 Mr Brazier: Could I say first, although it is not related, how nice it is to see Martin Bull here? I remember, in a previous Parliament-I was on the Defence Select Committee 10 or 12 years ago-when it was absolutely impossible to get any interest. It is a measure of how much things have moved on under successive Governments, Labour and Conservative, that we now have such good input from DfE.

On the continuity of education, we have heard from Service families that parents want to maintain continuity, but the recent tightening up of the rules on eligibility appears to have caused misunderstanding and concern. Certainly those of us with Service bases have had letters on this. What are we doing to make the system clearer, Mr Barlow?

Gavin Barlow: We have done quite a lot of communication on the continuity of education allowance already. You will recall, I think it is fair to say, that there was quite a controversial review of continuity of education allowance that reported in 2011. There was a lot of communication at that stage about what the implications of the review were. Latterly, we have been reviewing-we are reviewing-the presentation of the detail of regulations around continuity of education allowance, which are contained in the document called JSP 752, which a lot of Service families are familiar with, and it is being restructured. We have consulted with representative Service personnel and units to make sure that it is much better and easier to understand than the current set. It is not about substantive changes, but making it easier to see what the allowance is about, how it is administered and so on.

Q412 Mr Brazier: There has been a significant reduction in the number of claimants. Can you say something about balancing, really, three things: the needs of the Service child; the requirement, clearly, to cut costs, which has inevitably been a factor at the moment; and, thirdly, the key importance of maintaining the Service interest in protecting particular areas? For example, it has been put to us that the new rules can give a perverse incentive for people who have had particularly expensive training where there is only one location for that specialist skill. If they make a career move, and effectively the taxpayer loses that training, they will then be able to continue with the continuity of education allowance, and if they stay in an expensive speciality, they will lose it. Is that factor taken into account? What is the underlying parameter of the review? What factors are being balanced?

Gavin Barlow: Let me separate that out. First, dealing with the issue of costs, we took steps under the SDSR to review the whole allowances package, and that included the continuity of education allowance, in particular. There were a number measures taken at that point to tighten up the allowance, and one in particular that has had the most significant impact on numbers, I think, was the removal of the automatic entitlement to involuntary separation status for CEA for appointments in London and, indeed, for sea-going appointments, as well.

Our aim, in doing that, was to re-enforce the principle that the continuity of education allowance is there to support families who are committed to accompanied Service and are required by the Service to move and therefore they have to be given that option to maintain continuity of education through boarding. All of the reviews that have taken place, both at the time of the SDSR and the subsequent review that completed in 2011, and further policy developments as we have gone on through the New Employment Model, have stuck to that principle.

Q413 Mr Brazier: So the Service interest does not come into it. The fact that there may be a requirement to keep an expensive skill in one location, but people then realise that it is only by giving up on that skill and moving off with a career choice that they can keep-it is a little bit like, and I do not mean to draw an offensive parallel, how the benefits system, or something with a sound principle behind it, can end up having perverse consequences for the taxpayer.

Gavin Barlow: The continuity of education allowance is not designed to be a retention incentive. I entirely accept that, for some individuals, it is, de facto, because it provides an enormous amount of benefit for them, but that is not the purpose of the allowance and the policy is very clear that we will not use it for that purpose. If people, through their specialist requirements and their posting plots, do not any longer attract the continuity of education allowance, that may create retention issues for those particular groups or specialist branches. Clearly, we do, within the remuneration constructs, have other mechanisms through which we can, if we need to, deal with groups who might see retention problems as-

Q414 Mr Brazier: I understand, but when you are trying to have a more settled Service, my point is not just about retention, but about retention in that skill. A simple career move to another, different, speciality-anything. I am not going to keep you for too long on that, but whether it is somebody who has developed the cyber-warfare construct in the Royal Signals, which can only be delivered from Corsham, one could give a large number of examples where you are going to have a perverse incentive, from the Services’ point of view, that is not retention in the sense of staying in uniform. The problem is that they are going to move away from where their expensive skill can be used. But the answer is no, it is not part of it.

Can I move you on? You say, in the written evidence, if a child’s family home is static for "an extended period of time" and the family is not mobile, the child is not subject to the upheavals of Service life and there is no need for CEA. That is obviously a perfectly reasonable proposition. But how long is an extended period? Because there is a danger that a family’s eligibility may chop and change. What does "an extended period of time" mean?

Gavin Barlow: Can you remind me, Olivia?

Olivia Denson: A tour of assignment: three years.

Gavin Barlow: Yes.

Q415 Mr Brazier: Three years, so effectively if you do two postings in a row in the same place during the second one your entitlement to CEA will disappear. Or will it disappear if you do a third one? How does that work?

Gavin Barlow: It certainly would be subject to review so it would not necessarily disappear. Part of it is about triggering a process of review so that we can be clear that they are still entitled to the appropriate certificate. Ultimately it is about the assignment authority making a judgment on the probability of further moves.

Q416 Mr Holloway: But it can work the other way from what Julian Brazier is saying. Able people can take jobs that they would not otherwise take overseas in order to get the allowance. I can think of a one very prominent example who took a very big job in Afghanistan for just that reason.

Gavin Barlow: It could do.

Q417 Chair: But you will be given notice if your CEA is likely to be reduced or removed?

Gavin Barlow: Absolutely, yes.

Q418 Chair: How much notice?

Gavin Barlow: That would depend on the circumstances. For example, we do not remove people from CEA support in the middle of a stage of education-I think I’m right in saying that. Once you are into the defined stage then you know that you will maintain CEA, provided that you have not broken one of the other conditions. Essentially that is the case.

Q419 Mr Holloway: One of the widows from Afghanistan made the point to me a couple of years ago that one of the things she discussed when she was getting married to her husband was about whether he would stay on as a married officer and the fact they would get what was called the school fees allowance. I think you would save loads of money. But an awful lot of people took on their careers on the basis that this was part of the package. I imagine that we have lost some good people because of that. It is particularly hard for the widows. If your husband had managed to survive and live another 15 years, your kids would have gone to what invariably would be better schools. They lose that too when their husband dies.

Gavin Barlow: I don’t think that is a new point as a result of the reforms.

Q420 Mr Holloway: No, I understand that.

Gavin Barlow: Indeed, for the bereaved, as discussed already, the allowance is maintained until the end of the educational stage.

Q421 Mr Brazier: I think I know the answer to this, but I will ask it anyway. Given that the CEA is available to all serving personnel, why is it not taken up more widely by other ranks? What is being done to make other ranks more aware of the allowance?

Gavin Barlow: The split is about 60:40 officers to other ranks. It has been pretty stable for as far back as we have gone through the records on CEA. It is partly a demographic point. In terms of the numbers of Service personnel that we have, the vast majority are other ranks. So, many of them serve a relatively short period in the Services. That is particularly true of the Army. They will tend not to have so many children who are eight and over.

Q422 Mr Brazier: Just on that point. It would be helpful if you could give us the other split which is between those who started as other ranks and those who have been officers all the way through. In other words, if you moved that crucial tranche of people who have become officers by the time their children are old enough for secondary education, do you know what the split there is?

Gavin Barlow: I don’t. I will see if we can answer it.

Q423 Mr Brazier: Could you write to us? That would be very kind. A final question on this but an important one: in your written evidence you told us that a complete re-write of the CEA policy is under way. Clearly there will be a certain amount of apprehension out there. When do you expect it to be completed and what is the main aim?

Gavin Barlow: I am happy to clarify that. I referred earlier on to the fact that we are revising the wording in JSP 752, which includes the CEA rulebook, if you like. That is what I am talking about. It is not about changing the policy substance. We have no plans for significant revision of the policy substance at this stage.

Chair: It is helpful to know that. Thank you.

Q424 Mrs Moon: Can I take you back to the pupil premium? You have already told us that you are looking at gathering evidence about how it is spent. We already know that you are chasing it up with Wales and looking for new ways to make it work there. Can you tell us whether this information is publicly available? If it is, can we please have copies of the information you hold?

Martin Bull: The Department for Education is not required to gather evidence about how the Service premium has been spent, but we have collected soft case studies for the first year, which are on the DFE website and have been shared widely with schools just to give an idea of how they should be thinking about spending the money.

Schools are required to say how they spend the Service premium and to publicise that on their website. We will know how much impact the Service premium has had from performance tables. Also, Ofsted will look at it as part of its inspection. We will hear results over time through those routes.

Colonel Knightley: Part of the bidding process for the £3 million fund requires schools that are in receipt of the Service pupil premium to show how they have used it, as part of the support for their bid for the £3 million fund. There are a number of ways in which we are getting a good feel for how it is being used.

Q425 Mrs Moon: And in relation to Wales?

Olivia Denson: We can only wait and see what the Welsh Government decide to do.

Q426 Mrs Moon: Can you keep us in touch with any decisions that come out?

Olivia Denson: Certainly.

Q427 Mrs Moon: For the support fund for schools, do you keep records of applications for additional funds and how the money is spent?

Colonel Knightley: Yes. The £3 million fund-having inherited the process, I can claim no credit for it-is impressively well assured. I have described some aspects of the bidding process. Unlike the pupil premium, which is a pushed fund, if the bid is not sufficiently strong, schools simply will not get money from the fund. Also, before they can put a bid in for the subsequent year of funding, they have to show how they have used the previous year’s money. We have an audit process at the end of the year, and we are just gathering the evidence from the first year of the fund.

We are looking at every single successful bid that was made, seeing how schools spent the money-in very much the same way as Martin described, on the DFE website-and using that to collate and distribute good practice, so that people can put even better bids in for subsequent rounds. That is working very well.

Q428 Mrs Moon: Is that £3 million England only?

Colonel Knightley: No. This is pan-UK. The MOD’s £3 million fund crosses all the countries in the UK. It is the one fund. It is a level playing field for all four home countries.

Q429 Mrs Moon: Given that the pupil premium does not go to Welsh or Scottish schools, how do you assess what they have done, if you are not able to show how they have utilised the pupil premium?

Colonel Knightley: In the process by which those bids are looked at, which results in the ultimate decision on funding, we have a series of regional panels that look at bids from a particular region. Within Wales, they were looked at by a separate body. That allows the local knowledge and understanding to be present when the bid is assessed. The panel process, which ultimately comes to a single over-arching funding panel in our headquarters, also looks at the Service pupil premium dimension. There is a comparison, in terms of the funds that might be allocated, between a school in England, which is also getting funding through the Service pupil premium, and a school in Wales, which is not.

I can give you a specific example. I was a member of that final funding panel. In one specific case we were endorsing a decision made by the regional panels that reflected that and made sure that the £3 million fund was-we are back to advantage and disadvantage-properly weighted to reflect the fact that the pupil premium is not currently in place, certainly not in Wales.

Q430 Mrs Moon: Can you give us evidence of how that money is spread across the UK?

Colonel Knightley: The totality of the £3 million?

Q431 Mrs Moon: Yes. So that we get an idea of where the spend is. Obviously, we would expect a concentration of money in certain areas where we are aware that there are large numbers of Service families. Please do not think that we are looking to see it at the level of individual schools, but it would be interesting to have a footprint of where the money is.

Colonel Knightley: For that very reason, we do map the data, so we can show you them by county and by country.

Q432 Mrs Moon: Are you carrying out any research into the best practice and use of the additional funds?

Colonel Knightley: Yes, because the audit process for the £3 million fund is as objective as we can make it, looking at where success has been achieved. We do visit as many schools as we can. We simply do not have the people available to visit all of them. In some cases, we will be taking evidence from the school. In as many cases as we can, we will be going out and visiting the school concerned, and we then analyse those data. That is where we get that best practice from.

Q433 Mrs Moon: Given that the pupil premium is not in Scotland or Wales, are you happy that you can still meet the Service Covenant requirement that children of Armed Forces families are not disadvantaged anywhere in the UK?

Colonel Knightley: Yes, I think we can, for the reasons that were given earlier in terms of there being a different funding model. Clearly, the power is devolved, and we are limited in that. But on my list of concerns, there is nothing that is characterised by a significant difference between one country within the UK and another as a result of the way in which those devolved powers are applied.

Q434 Mrs Moon: I can tell you that as a Welsh MP I get complaints from serving members of the Armed Forces that their children do not get the pupil premium.

Colonel Knightley: We have had those data as well whenever we publicise the Service pupil premium-of course we cannot target it to Service personnel only within England. I spend quite a lot of my time, along with the rest of the staff, on that matter. We get quite a lot of queries in from individual Service personnel via our website on the intranet and on the internet about just that.

Q435 Chair: I was going to ask a question, which was going to be the final question, about the risk of duplication between all the different bodies that oversee Service children’s education, but I think, and this is a warning to the Minister, that I will put that question to the Minister instead. I have another final question, which you will hate yourself for, Mr Knightley. You have just mentioned on your list of concerns an issue that was not very high on it. What is at the top of your list of concerns?

Colonel Knightley: My priority has to be to make sure that, where we are in lieu of a local authority and therefore have statutory responsibility, we are doing the best we can. Although I hope that we have given you an idea of the very close interest we take in those who are delivering for our Service children within the UK, our absolute priority and what features on our comprehensive risk register is those areas where we have statutory responsibility. So my concern is safeguarding overseas to make sure that we are meeting the spirit as well as the letter of safeguarding legislation. It is overseas where we have that statutory responsibility, and safeguarding is always at the top of my list.

Q436 Sir Bob Russell: My apologies to the panel; I have been absent because I have been juggling with another Committee. As you know, our inquiry is "The Armed Forces Covenant in action? Educating the Children of Service Personnel". Mr Bull, do the Education Acts trump the Armed Forces Covenant when it comes to the education of the children of military personnel?

Martin Bull: I could not answer that question here I am afraid-not confidently.

Chair: Mr Barlow, you look as though you might have something to say.

Q437 Sir Bob Russell: If I can explain the background to my question, you will understand where I am coming from. The Armed Forces Covenant says that priority should be given to the children of military personnel. That is fine; we agree with that in principle. But the reality is that if there is an "Army" school-I use that in quotation marks because obviously it is a local authority school-which over the decades has been predominantly if not exclusively for the children of military personnel, and some of the MOD houses are sold off into the private sector, for social housing or owner occupiers or whatever, and there is a large number of children, they could, and indeed in my constituency it is already happening, take precedence over the Army children, who may move in at awkward times of the year when the school is full. That is why I asked whether the Education Acts trump the Armed Forces Covenant. I think the answer is, yes it does.

Chair: I suspect that is another question for the Minister.

Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you very much indeed for giving evidence in a very helpful way to our inquiry today.