Breaking Point

Many schools face diverse and multiple challenges which affect the whole learning environment and place huge demands on staff. These schools deliver daily specialist support for a range of additional educational needs, and also provide ongoing pastoral care for deprived pupils and their families coping with the effects of homelessness, relationship breakdown, drug and alcohol addiction and other problems associated with the complexities of modern living.

So often the schools that need to provide this extra support are the same schools which face continual classroom instability from an ever changing pupil roll and high levels of teacher turnover. This report uses the day-to-day experiences of teachers from 67 London primary and secondary schools to illustrate how high levels of pupil mobility help compound multiple disadvantages and show how this affects the equality of educational opportunity for all children in these schools.

Education is a key factor in determining a child's life chances. It is critical that deprived children are given the full opportunity to reach their potential. That means ensuring that the schools they attend are given sufficient resources to address their needs. But no additional funding is targeted to the schools and education authorities which bear the brunt of constant pupil movement. Vital teaching resources are often diverted from the children who need them most, because schools with large numbers of deprived children can be overwhelmed by the sheer extent of the challenges they face.

Too often pupil mobility is dealt with by just 'getting by' and relying on the goodwill of teachers to work extra unpaid hours to address genuine educational need. Real opportunities to lift children out of poverty must be supported by additional teaching capacity. This means ensuring that schools with multiple deprivation and high pupil turnover receive sufficient funding to make equality of educational opportunity a reality.