Jasmine Smith is just nine years old but she has already moved schools three times because her family has been forced to live in insecure rented accommodation.

The Smith family, parents Paul and Joanna, and their daughters Jasmine and Enya, spent four years living in short-term rented accommodation. Each time a tenancy ended and the landlord wanted the property back, Jasmine had to switch schools.

Jasmine's father, an IT engineer, says the frequent changes have affected her more than her younger sister, who was at nursery during the moves: "Jasmine is traumatised. We're settled now and she's got a group of friends, but she is terrified of losing them."

The Smiths' situation was unusual – neither parent had a credit record because they had worked abroad for 11 years before returning to the UK, so despite having a £30,000 deposit, they were unable to borrow a mortgage. But their experience is similar to that of thousands of families forced to move because their landlord wants to evict them or their rent is no longer covered by housing benefit, according to the housing charity Shelter.

It points to figures from the English Housing Survey, which shows that families with children living in the private rental sector are 10 times more likely to move than those who own their own home. In 2009-10, 30% or 310,000 of the 1 million families in the private rental sector moved. In comparison just 3% or 122,000 out of 3.8 million property owning families moved.

Those living in the private rental sector were also less settled than those in social housing: 66% of private renters moved in the last three years compared with 23% of social renters.

The charity would like the government to construct a private rental model based on those in Europe, where notice periods and tenancies are longer. Assured shorthold contracts in the UK allow landlords to have a break clause enabling them to end the tenancy at six months, but the landlord can choose not to. Shelter believes many landlords would prefer a long-term tenant, but most buy-to-let mortgage lenders require landlords to restrict the length of tenancies to a fixed term.

Campbell Robb, chief executive of Shelter, says: "With the doors to home ownership or social housing firmly closed for many, the number of families who are privately renting has increased by almost 80% in the last two years. But there's mounting evidence that private renting is failing to provide the stability that children desperately need."

He points out that landlords need give only two months' notice to evict, which can mean uprooting children from schools, friends, family and childcare. "Longer tenancies, with predictable rent increases, could help lift children from the merry-go-round of home after home, school after school," he says.

"The government must take urgent steps to make private renting work for families, giving them the stability to settle down, make long-term plans, and look forward to the future," Robb adds.

The problem is acute in central London. Emily Norman, headteacher at the St Matthew's CE primary school in Westminster, says 35% of the school's pupils leave every year because of relocation. – more than one-third of the school's pupils leaving because of relocation

She says: "Each time a child moves school, his new teachers have to assess his abilities and start him on a new programme. If they are moving schools every six months or year, their reading and ability with numbers is often significantly impaired. I was speaking to the parent of one eight-year-old this morning who has been to three schools between the ages of five and seven. He has huge gaps in his learning as a result.

"Sometimes the parents decide to keep their children at our school even though they have moved out of the area – it gives them a certain amount of security. We have children coming from Croydon and Romford even. But that causes problems in itself, some ending up having to change buses two or three times to get here."

A report commissioned by the Labour government in 2009 (pdf) said that moving home is not necessarily problematic for children's education. But it added that disadvantaged families were likely to move more often, and "very frequent moves are less likely to improve housing conditions or school quality, and may exacerbate disadvantage".

Research included in another paper on deprivation and education published by the Department for Children, Schools and Families in 2009 found that moving between secondary schools, especially after the start of year 10, has a particularly negative effect on exam performance at age 16. It said: "The average point score is depressed by more than 20 points for pupils who are mobile during years 7, 8 or 9, and by more than 70 points for those pupils who join the school after September in year 10. The former effect is similar in magnitude to that of being eligible for FSM, whilst the latter effect is greater than the effect of having a statement of special educational needs."

Stephen Adjei, a private sector tenant who has had to find new homes three times in the last 10 years, says his children Jodelle, nine, and Jordan, six, have switched schools every time the family has moved. "The children have just made friends and settled down to learning when we have to move again."

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