The Armed Forces Covenant in Action? Part 3: Educating the children of Service personnel

Written evidence from the Boarding Schools’ Association

This submission is made on behalf of the Boarding Schools’ Association (BSA), a members’ association which represents the interests of 484 boarding schools in the UK, the majority of which are independent schools in membership of the Independent Schools Council’s constituent associations. The State Boarding Schools’ Association (SBSA) with 38 member schools, is a sub-set of the BSA, and has made a separate submission to the Committee.

I am Hilary Moriarty, National Director of the BSA and SBSA

Summary

· Independent school boarding is more expensive than state boarding

· But there are too few state boarding schools to offer real choice

· CEA should therefore remain available for use by eligible personnel at an independent boarding school, of which there are more than 400

· Many have built up considerable expertise in nurturing the children of Forces personnel, offering them stability and community instead of upheaval and disruption

· Severe decline of CEA market will have a drastic impact on independent boarding schools, causing some to cease their boarding operation, reducing scope for parental choice and with considerable impact on local economies

1. A place at an independent boarding school will cost the customer more than a place at a state boarding school. In these stringent times, the wish for the MoD to support a boarding place for a Forces’ child at a state boarding school rather than in an independent boarding school is easy to understand.

2. However, an intrinsic part of the Covenant with Forces personnel is that the CEA is meant to support Forces parents. Their right to preference when choosing a school for their child is important, if the choosing of a school is not to be even more stressful than it may be now.

3. While there are 38 state boarding schools, and will be only 37 by September 2013, there are more than 400 independent boarding schools. This number offers real choice for parents and children.

4. Independent schools are many and various: highly academic and selective; less academic; non-selective; specialising in sport or art or music or drama; for children up to 11, or 13, or 16, or 18; for girls only, or boys only, or co-ed; in the country or in town; large or small; or large school with small boarding numbers; near an airport or a major station or the motorway. All of this is what real choice is about.

5. Many boarding schools have built up considerable expertise in supporting the children of serving Forces personnel with their particular anxieties and difficulties over and above any which any child might suffer in school. Boarders are separated from their parents; not many of them live in daily fear of the death of a parent on active service. The fact that some schools have large numbers of Forces children indicates that the parents are seeing their children as joining a discrete group of boarders within the school who will know and understand and sympathise with their particular situation. It is also testimony to the fact that the schools are doing an excellent job of creating a stable learning environment for the children, whose future lives depend upon their academic and other success in school, without fear of disruption or upheaval.

6. Choice for a family with one or both parents deployed overseas will include working out who will be near the child/children at boarding school and available in an emergency. Choice of school can be as much about location of grandparents as it is about the school’s academic record.

7. Crucially, when an independent boarding school considers a child for a place, they can make a quick decision and offer immediately – in October a year ahead, for instance – a place for the following September. A definite offer as early as this gives parents and child certainty as early as possible, well before a place can be confirmed by a state boarding school.

8. BSA therefore submits that it is important that the CEA for Forces personnel eligible to claim it should continue to be available to be used in the school of the parents’ choosing, without restraint or prescription.

9. Children in receipt of CEA constitute 11% of the independent schools’ boarding market. The recent tightening up of regulations and governance of the system has already had an impact, with new MoD children in independent schools last year down to 992, from the previous year’s figure of 1,790. Long term changes to the terms and conditions of service in the Forces will certainly reduce the demand for CEA even further.

10. There is no doubt that falling numbers in this key area of the boarding market will have a dramatic impact on boarding schools. It is very possible that some schools will close their boarding houses completely, reducing still further the choices available to Forces families. One school in the South West, for instance, has seen its CEA boarders fall from 135 in 2009-10 to 55 in 2012-13. Impact on local economies, particularly in the South West, for instance, where there are large concentrations of Forces children in boarding schools, would be severe.

Hilary Moriarty
National Director

February 2013