Thursday 26th July 2018
Quite often you and your families have told us of your challenges sometimes in obtaining school places for your children. If you have been posted or are about to be, requiring your child(ren) to move school, please share with us your experiences; both negative and positive though our online survey.
This online survey is designed to be anonymous. However, if you wish to provide your email address your details will be kept securely and only used for the purpose of this survey.
Acting Director of the RAF FF, Graeme Spark said:
“We have offered support and advice to many families over the last 10 years both in engagement with local authorities and educational specialists and of course assisting them during what, for some is a very difficult experience.
“However, it is essential that we collect and present to MOD quantifiable and measurable evidence – our survey aims to do this.”
Please find the time to support us in this area of influencing policy. The more who can complete the survey, the bigger our message can be.
How the survey is going so far
Out of those who have experienced the school admission process (length of time to be allocated a school place), 7% of you said it was very good, 29% said okay, 24% good, 21% poor and 19% very poor.
Comments:
“We were told we could not be informed by email, we were moving from USA. They posted the offer letter to our allocated quarter one week before we moved. Year one is very full across the area we are going to, our first offer letter advised us to ‘retain her in her current educational setting’. Less than impressed.”
“When we moved from one county to another and back again they both have different application systems which made it difficult. One council used paper forms and the other one was online. the information didn’t get passed between schools very well either and when the new school called the old they didn’t get a response.”
Assignment/posting notification-related comments:
When asked how far in advance the assignment order/posting notification, 45% said they received theirs three months in advance, 15% two months, 12% one month, 8% four months 7% five months and 6% for six months.
Comments:
“We have actually been posted 3 times in the last 36 months. From one Station we had about 5 weeks’ notice, which wasn’t great for finding a school and going through the process. However there was enough notice for the other postings although it wasn’t easy having to sort it out over the Xmas holidays.”
“Verbally offered promotion and posting three months in advance but took a month for the official assignment order to arrive.”
