Schools in England should do more to help children of parents serving in the armed forces

Children often feel anxious when their parents are on active service

A report by the education watchdog says while forces children generally do as well as other pupils, frequent school moves can have an adverse effect.

It says exam results can suffer and the uncertainty of having parents in conflict zones can lead to social and emotional problems for some children.

The government says it is providing cash to help schools tackle the issues.

It is allocating a £200-per-pupil premium to provide pastoral assistance and a £3m fund to help mitigate potential problems in schools with high numbers of services children.

Ofsted's report was commissioned by the Ministry of Defence to identify where support for service children
could be improved.

Overall, forces pupils tend to do as well, if not better than the national average, but where there are high levels of mobility, performance is not so good, says Ofsted.
'Gaps in education'

There was a clear recognition that the mobility associated with service life can have a detrimental effect on children, the report said.

This was particularly so when moves took place during GCSE years and could have a big impact on pupils' results.

It added that continual moves had a negative effect on these youngsters' friendships and their personal development, and they often had "gaps" in their education and needed help to catch up.

"The combination of deployment of a family member and regular moves of home and school can cause anxiety and stress for service families whether living in the UK or overseas: education is disturbed, social networks are disrupted and parents left behind have to cope with the effects of being a 'single parent'," the report added.

And it pointed out that schools reported an increase in the number of problems related to the social and emotional welfare of service children. This had led to a need for extra school-based counselling.

One pupil told inspectors he missed a "male presence" in the house and that he still worried about his father's placement in Iraq even though it was several years ago.

At another school, children were regularly heard to say: "Four more sleeps until Daddy is home!"..... For more information....