EDUCATION
Service Families’ Children Education MUST TRY HARDER
Jane Melbourne of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate is OFSTED National Adviser (Parents and Carers). Jane is author of the report: ‘Children in Service families – The quality and impact of partnership provision for children in Service families’. Here she discusses her findings.
W
hen Service families’ children attend many different schools, continuity and
progression in learning is hard to achieve and there is more we should be doing to support their progress.
Highly mobile Service children need better support; those who face regular moves of home and school can suffer disruption to their learning and can suffer high levels of anxiety and stress. This situation is not helped by poor transfer of children’s records between schools. Often the transfer is not well coordinated and important information is delayed or does not arrive at all.
Comprehensive data, following children as they move, would make a real difference. When information is not passed on, children are more likely to miss large parts of the curriculum and essential training and they may struggle to catch up. While most Service children achieve well, a significant minority do not achieve the grades they might.
Not passing information on also makes it hard for the new school to understand the child’s ability levels or needs from the outset, so there may be a delay in provision. It is helpful for schools to know what a child has learned over the whole key stage to ensure there are no gaps in learning. Service children were found to be achieving in line with their peers academically by the end of each key stage, but many children’s progress had suffered and they required additional support to catch up.
Moves cause disruption and stress to families. There are worries about their children being put into the right ability group. For children with special educational needs, continuity of provision for their needs may be broken and they may find moves particularly upsetting.
Moving in Years 10 and 11 can be particularly disruptive to young people. Some move to schools that follow a different GCSE syllabus, which can result in young people not achieving the grades they might. For young people
www.raf-ff.org.uk
aged14-19 there are anxieties about following the course of their choice and completing qualifications, as well as the issue of not having any sustained friendships.
Service children are often more susceptible to social and emotional disturbance while a parent or other family member is on active deployment. Without an accurate single register of Service families’ children or an effective system to track their movements there is a lack of continuity of support and provision for children as they move between schools. This is heightened in areas where service children are small numbers and there is less understanding of their needs.
Current media interest in military operations may exacerbate stress in families and this is bound to have an impact on the children, who are very aware of the dangers involved. Children’s behaviour may be very different before and after deployment. These are times when anxiety levels may run high and children and young people will require additional support at school to help maintain their emotional stability.
There are many schools which do give excellent support to Service children. The report highlights the good practice found and contains information on effective pastoral systems in a number of schools. It is important that good practice is shared widely and that other schools emulate it. The report looks at positive examples of partnership working between schools and external agencies. The report recommends that a central register of Service families’ children is established so that all those responsible for these children are aware of who they are and where they are.
Some local authorities provide very good support, including the educational psychology service, recognising that Service children may need fluctuating levels of support during moves or deployment. By identifying these children as a priority group, and putting tailored, timely support in place, children adjusted to their situation better and coped better with their circumstances.
Local authorities and schools which had a long association with Service families and Service Children’s Education abroad, were often better engaged with their needs than those where the needs of Service children were less understood.
The MoD works hard to provide for the families and children of serving personnel. The survey team recognised that much has been done to improve provision in the current challenging military context. The military have been pro-active in trying to resolve challenges in providing education and services to their families. The report recommends that the MoD should consider greater flexibility on movement dates for families, within the constraints of military priorities, and further develop the options available for 14-19 year olds.
The report also recommends future government policy ensures that particular account is taken of the needs of Service children, for example in admissions to school and in placing children with special educational needs. It would be helpful if local authorities could do more to promptly assess the needs of children with special educational needs, when children from Service families move to the area.
The survey identified excellent practice and pastoral systems where schools allocated specific professional roles to coordinate the needs of Service families’ children and their transfers in and out of the school. Families said that this really helped them to adjust. We recommend the Department for Education collates and shares this excellent practice amongst professionals so children’s needs can be better met.
OFSTED hopes its recommendations will help to improve progression in learning and the achievement of children in Service families. Highly mobile Service families’ children need better support and continuity and there is more we should be doing.
The full report is available on the OFSTED website at:
www.ofsted.gov.uk
Envoy Autumn 2011 25
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56