Under the Radar: Service Children and Higher Education in England Report
This report addresses a significant gap in the sector’s understanding of Service children and higher education in England examining the present situation in terms of policy, practice and evidence where access to higher education for Service children in England is concerned.
It focuses especially, on the decision by the Office for Students not to include Service children in the first iteration of its Equal Opportunities Risk Register (EORR) launched last year arguing that this decision poses a threat to widening access work with Service Children and the activities of many NEON members. The report includes a series of recommendations directly relevant to the practice of NEON members including asking the Office for Students to include Service Children in the EORR. It also includes examples of leading practice in widening access work with Service children from higher education providers and Uni-Connect partnerships.
Abstract: This research set out to investigate the experiences of ‘grown up’ children from armed forces families, to gather their reflections on childhood and education, and to seek their advice to inform the current armed forces community, policy-makers and practitioners. The Service Children’s Progression Alliance (SCiP) defines a child from an armed forces family as “a person whose parent or carer serves in the Regular Armed Forces, or as a Reservist, or has done at any point during the first 25 years of that person’s life” (SCiP, 2017: para 2) and the Office for Students refers to this definition in their documentation relating to student characteristics (OfS n.d. para 8, see also OfS, 2020: para 11). In this research we use the term ‘grown up’ to indicate individuals over the age of 18 recognised to have reached the legal age of adulthood in the UK. This group of individuals are currently overlooked in research, policy and practice as the focus continues to be on serving members of the armed forces, veterans, and families, including school-aged children.