Scottish Armed Forces Education Support Group minutes: September 2025

Attendees and apologies

• Scottish Government (SG) Learning Directorate (Chair and Minutes)
• Scottish Government (SG) Safer Communities Directorate
• MOD RAF Representative (RAF)
• Association of Directors of Education in Scotland (ADES) Advisor (AA)
• Association of Directors of Education in Scotland (ADES) National Education and Transitions Officer (NETO)
• Naval Families Federation (NFF)
• MOD Armed Forces Families and Safeguarding
• Forces Children Scotland (FCS)
• MOD Army Representative (AR)
• Army Families Federation (AFF)
• RAF Families Federation (RAF-FF)
• Education Scotland, Inclusion Wellbeing and Equalities (ES)

Apologies

• MOD Royal Navy Representative (RN)
• Napier University

Items and actions

Review of Actions of Previous Meeting – 19 March 2025

The note of the last meeting was shared for comments.  Amendments were received and actioned. These have been published and are available on the Scottish Government website.

Action: include UNCRC in child protection and safeguarding issues.  The Chair and ES representative will pick this up and aim to address at a future meeting.

Safeguarding

Recent discussions have focused on how information about deployments is shared and the importance of safeguarding families. The previous process for notifying deployments has been discontinued, and all relevant stakeholders have been informed. While families are not required to share deployment details, support remains available. Guidance from MOD/DfE is in place, and further conversations on safeguarding are ongoing.

Action: ADES will provide the group with a copy of the letter that was shared with the ADES Network.

Data Collection

The collection of data on pupils that are from Armed Forces families has been added to the pupil census data specification with effect from the September 2025 census. Pupil Census date was Wednesday, 10 September 2025, data is quality assured by Scottish Government, so headline data will be released towards end of the year. The Armed Forces data release is expected to be around March 2026. The agreed format for the collection is that the data will be uplifted in the same format as it currently exists on SEEMiS.

Additional Support for Learning Review Action Plan

The last progress report was published in November 2024 and set out 3 priority areas for delivery before March 2026: National Measurement Framework, Communications and the Code of Practice Refresh.

The first iteration of the National Measurement Framework is drafted and ready to be shared as part of NIFIER refresh in December 2025. This will be updated quarterly.

Enquire has been commissioned to lead on producing a strategy to improve communications of key information to different audiences.  The audiences have been broken down into 3 primary categories: Children & Young People, Parents & Carers and Professionals.

Work on the refresh of the Code of Practice is ongoing.  The aim is to provide clarity, so the refresh will not contain any legislative changes to the 2004 Additional Support for Learning Act.

Action: the Chair will share the consultation link with the group when available.

Armed Forces Transitions Resource Updates

The subgroup last met on the 14 September 2025. There are 5 working groups:

Engagement with Educators, a survey has been shared with MOD schools overseas and 4 nations and will collate information to share at the next meeting.

Index of Resources have been looking at resources across the nations and collating.

Product Design have been looking at ways to ensure resource is simple and accessible.

Communications Plan, and the Evaluation and Review groups have drafted a process and plan which will take place at later date. The transitions group are looking at a singular place to hold the resource then have links out to nations and other groups beyond to ensure main point is up to date.

Regular meetings will continue to be held over the coming months.

It was suggested that the MOD have a Family Hub within a system called Discover my Benefits and this could host the resource. A test page has been set up on the mock site. This will allow the different nations to have their own page that will link back to the main MOD hosted site.

Transitions

No updates.

Members Updates

ADES National Education and Transitions Officer - In addition to the ongoing work with the Armed Forces Transitions group, the ADES National Education and Transitions Officer (NETO) continues to have network meetings across local authorities as well as meetings to discuss a funding workshop hopefully taking place in the next few months.

Forces Children Scotland - have published a 3-year strategy entitled Hear, Involve, Support, co-produced with children & young people from forces families. The Children’s Rights Charter is live, and the organisation would be keen to share the Charter at a future meeting to see how it can be used across the sector. Funding has been given from the Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust to work in partnership with Early Years Scotland to deliver a training resource and tools for early years practitioners. This is in the co-production phase and work with parents of children in early years settings as well as practitioners continues to identify training needed to meet needs of Armed Forces children in those settings. Work is ongoing with Star Catchers to do some art-based work in nurseries. The learning resource will be launched and hosted on the Early Years Scotland website.

Edinburgh Napier University - Working with the Army, looking into wider access to higher education. Cadets will attend the open day to give them the opportunity to see what education is like and to encourage them to think beyond school. PHD students are mentoring the cadets.

RAF Family Federation - has a new Director. Supporting All To Thrive impact event took place in London in September 2025 and the executive summary has been published online: Impact event | Supporting All to Thrive. This research project looked at the educational outcomes and experiences of children with additional support needs across the UK. Researchers looked at the National Pupil Database in England, a survey was carried out to gather insights from both serving and non-serving parents of children with ASN, and arts workshops were conducted with parents/carers to gather insights into families’ and children’s lived experiences, challenges and successes. The final report will be published in due course. SCiP Alliance conference taking place in Glasgow in November this year.

MOD Armed Forces Families and Safeguarding - A strategic defence review is taking place. There is work going on around the offer to Armed Forces families regarding childcare. An options analysis document has gone forward.

Families Federations are working on an overseas project (Valuing Forces Families Overseas). This is funded by a four-year transformational grant from the Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust. There are a number of individual projects, with each Families Federation is leading on a different aspect of the work of the programme. The purpose of this is to implement an evidence-based portfolio of support that incorporates the whole cycle of an overseas posting.

A Game of Snakes & Ladders – Armed Forces Families With Children Requiring Additional Support With Their Education

A report has been produced following research carried out by Edinburgh Napier University, Centre for Military Research, Education and Public Engagement, ADES and Forces Children Education supported by The Armed Forces Covenant Trust into Armed Forces Children requiring Additional Support with their education.  A presentation was shared with the group on the findings of the research.

Any Other Business

It was highlighted that there are changes in legislation relating to PVG/DBS clearance and anyone carrying out a regulated role with children and young people or protected adults must be a member of the Protecting Vulnerable Groups (PVG) scheme. This will have a cross-border impact for cadet activities, adult volunteers and older cadets leading groups across borders (e.g. Scotland to England or overseas) and will need PVG (Scotland or DBS (England/Wales) or Access NI clearance.

Date of next meeting

2 December 2025