How does military life shape service children's identity and school experiences?

Thesis

Service children are identified by virtue of the occupation of their parents. Their lives are shaped by the unique demands placed on armed forces personnel. Service children are more likely to move (home and school) than their non-service peers and parental separation is common amongst service families. Alongside these experiences of mobility and separation, being part of an armed forces family results in the creation of a distinct identity, which further sets service children apart from their peers. As a result, they have unique educational experiences, associated needs and a distinctive identity which are often not fully understood, or supported, in the English state school context.

Since 2011, service children in English state schools have received targeted funding, known as the Service Pupil Premium (SPP). In the academic year 2023-2024, £335 per child was provided to schools for 78,897 individuals, amounting to just over £26.43 million in total (Department for Education [DfE], 2024). Despite the significant amount of funding given to schools over the last 13 years, there has been considerable criticism of the SPP. Indeed, as a recent report – commissioned by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) – highlights, the SPP is “poorly understood and poorly used” (Walker, Selous & Misca, 2020, p.69).

Bringing together voice research and creative methods, this research was undertaken with service children, to explore their thoughts and feelings around their service child identity and school experiences. In total, 19 service children, aged between 9 and 16 years old, participated in a range of innovative ‘data generation’ methods – self-portraits and relational maps, timelines and free responses – alongside discussion, within their respective English state school contexts.

Findings from this doctoral research both enrich and widen current understanding of service children’s school experiences and further knowledge into how service children see themselves. Crucially, this thesis develops the concept of the ‘service child identity’ and explores the relationship between this identity and the broader concept of school belonging. From this, implications are derived, which serve to help inform SPP funding choices and wider school culture and practice within English state schools.

Authors: Robinson, L

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-kovzegkko
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: school experiences; mobility; armed forces; service child(ren); voice research; creative methods; military child(ren); service pupil premium (SPP); separation; children of Armed Forces personnel; school belonging; identity; military life; child-orientated research
• Subjects: Education