Welcome to our Service Families page. Here you will be able to find information about our Service Club, Gosport Community Hub Support and events that we will be holding, as well as keeping you up to date with the latest news from our Bears on Deployment.

What is Service Premium?

  • The Premium was introduced by the Department for Education (DfE) as part of the commitment to delivering the Armed Forces Covenant. The premium enables schools to provide extra support for children with parents in the Armed Forces.
  • SPP is money that is paid directly to state schools, free schools and academies across England to support Service children. The current amount paid to each school, annually, is £335 per child in Years R-11.
  • Schools decide how the money is to be spent on Service children mainly through pastoral support. Unlike the Pupil Premium, SPP is not for attainment; however, mobile Service children may need targeted help in a new school to catch up with their class or to cover gaps in understanding due to missing out on key learning areas.

Support for Children who are from Service Families

Miss Dee Hall is the representative for our Service Families. Should you need to contact her please pop in to see her, telephone or email: dhall@gomer.gfmat.org Additionally, Mrs Vicky Wilden, our Children and Families Leader has an over-view of pastoral provision, provided by the LAPS Team, for children who are from Service Families.

Childcare Funding for Service Children

Finding suitable childcare for your children can be tricky, but there are lots of ways to help you find different types of childcare in your area.  Gomer Junior do have a brilliant breakfast and after-school club called GClub. For information about how you can access funding for this childcare, please visit here.

GFM Community Hub

The GFM Service team is based at the Community Hub at Brune Park. They provide an array of activities throughout the year for Gomer Service Children – parties, socials, cooking etc. Every week Mrs Charli Clarke, who is our linked adult from the Service Team, visits and is mad available to our Service Children when required. Her background is in supporting student engagement in class. She is qualified to provide ELSA as an Emotional Literacy Support Assistant. It is her responsibility to provide emotional literacy support in conjunction with the school, deployment support (and this can include short absences), ELSA (referrals must go through the school). weekly drop-in sessions, activities, support for service families transitioning in or out of the area, and to signpost families to the relevant services. If you have any questions or would like support, then please contact the school, or Charli directly by sending her an email to: cclarke@gfmat.org.

Service Club

Miss Hall hosts our weekly Service Club on a Tuesday lunchtime in The Globe. The children participate in a variety of activities. They are also welcome to eat lunch together or just join Miss Hall for the activities. Miss Hall offers the children drinks (carbonated and still) to choose from to make the session extra special. Here is a snapshot of what they have been up to:

July ’23: Wishes for the year ahead, parachute games and mocktail making with our adults from home.
June ’23: using our outdoors: gardening on our allotment.
May ’23 Outdoor fun – the children have been really enjoying using their parachute – having lots of fun learning new games and playing some firm favourites.
April ’23 Team Building – an opportunity to learn even more abut each other and how to best communicate.
March ’23 Month of the Military Child – talks and thoughts about this and how we can celebrate as a school.
February ’23 Love – thinking about things in our life that we love, outlining why and celebrating this.
January ’23 Wishes – Recycling our ‘hand’ Christmas tree (on the board) to record our wishes for ourselves, the local and global community.
December ’22: Festive, festive, festive activities for the month ahead including a party at The Community Hub at the end of term.
November ’22: Remembrance – taking time to prepare to reflect and remember. An opportunity for all to prepare for our whole school remembrance gathering
October ’22: During October we worked on our team-building skills and getting to know our new members from year 3, with the Lees up to help term and Halloween, we completed spooky colouring pages and made scary masks.
September ’22: We’re new and keen to get to know each other so focussed on our sense of ‘belonging’ to the Gomer Service Community.
July ’22: Party, party, party. A time to celebrate our super community.
June ’22: Ben showed off his fabulous archery skills.
May ’22: We have played a variety of games, crafting for Mother’s Day, spent some time outside on the GMG and generally been having a lot of fun.
April ’22: April was the month of celebrating the military child. We discussed this and all children were given a certificate to thank them for their resilience and understanding towards how difficult their lives can be at times when their parent/carer has to go away with work, sometimes for long periods of time. At Easter we watched an Easter themed movie and the children were each given an Easter egg. 
March ’22: The children loved their pancakes for Shrove Tuesday. They ate them far quicker than they made them! We have played a variety of games, crafting for Mothers Day, spent some time outside on the GMG and generally been having a lot of fun.

Sailors Children’s Society: Providing help & support to children of seafarers for almost 200 years. http://www.sailorschildren.org.uk/

Magazine Stars Two of our learners (Rupert & Tristan) have been featured in the Spring 2023 ‘Homeport’ magazine for service children! They are very pleased with themselves.

Termly Enrichment

We aim to host a termly enrichment activity for our children from Service Families. Service Children are provided an additional session on the Gomer Multi-Gym (GMG) which was funded by the MOD. We aim to provide a variety of nurture opportunities for our children in the Service Club.

In this academic year 2022-2023, so far the Service Club have:

  • played a key part in our Remembrance Assembly
  • had the opportunity to attend the remembrance gathering at the War Memorial
  • had the opportunity to attend weekly Service Club
  • attended the Community Hub Christmas party
  • had the opportunity to use our new LEGO kits – Boomtown Build and Spike Prime
  • attended weekly service club

Remembrance 2022

The whole school gathered on 11.11.22 with some of our Service Families. Meeting outside is very poignant and allows us to listen to nature and the canons in the distance. The gathering, in which the whole community attended (some in their uniforms) enabled us to reflect and remember. We were very pleased to be joined by some of our service families who supported our time of remembrance by reading poems and presenting our wreath. During our time of reflection, the school took time to pause,  reflect and remember. A tribute was made to all our families, past and present who have serving armed forces personnel; in particular, those who are currently on deployment.

Bear on Deployment

If you are going to be deployed, please let us know. Do you have an e mail address that we could have whilst you are away? This would be really useful, as your child will be able to keep in touch during service club held every Tuesday after school.  We can make arrangements for them to communicate at other times too. You may also like to take Booty Bear, Jack Bear or Marine Bear on deployment with you so that they can keep us posted of their travels.

2022-203 Bear on Deployment:

  • Pongo Bear went on his travels with WO1 Beech in November and he ended up in Budapest