More than £84 million is being spent on sending thousands of children of service personnel to Eton, Wellington, Gordonstoun, and other boarding schools, according to new figures from the Ministry of Defence (MoD).
The amount spent on the Continuity of Education Allowance (CEA) in 2014/15 is ten times the £8.4m additional funding allocated to the NHS in England to deal with the mental health of veterans over the next five years.
Most of those benefiting from the controversial subsidy for private schooling are officers rather than rank and file soldiers, sailors, and airmen.
And eight out of ten service personnel who currently get the allowance are based in Britain rather than overseas, according to defence officials.
Gordonstoun is one of the schools which received children of army personnel last year (Getty)
The allowance is worth between £9,087 and £30,252 a year per child, depending on their age and whether they have special educational needs. It can be claimed from when a child is aged eight and continue until they end education at 18. Parents are required to pay at least ten per cent of the fees.
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Of the 5,800 children getting a private education under CEA, just 1,370 have parents who are lower than officers in rank. Two thirds of those being privately educated are children of senior officers with a rank of captain or above, including vice admirals, air marshals and lieutenant generals.
One hundred children were sent to Eton, Fettes, Radley, Wellington, and Gordonstoun last year, according to statistics released last Friday in response to a Freedom of Information request. The total bill for the allowance was £84.5m in 2014/15.
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The private school to benefit most from the scheme was Queen Ethelburga’s College in York, with £3.8m paid in fees. It was one of 14 private schools which received at least £1m in payments for the children of service personnel in 2014/15. A list of the top 25 schools paid the most under the scheme includes just three state schools. This is despite service personnel applying for the allowance having been urged in recent years to choose state boarding schools because they are cheaper and therefore better value for the taxpayer.
The scale of the subsidy for private education is set against a backdrop of major cuts to the armed forces which have seen more than 10,000 service personnel made redundant since 2010. And a further half a billion cut in the defence budget was announced earlier this year.
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“It is not clear that the CEA is a cost-efficient or effective way of supporting parents and limiting the disruption that their service can cause to their children’s education and development. £84 million is a considerable sum of public money to pay in subsidises for boarding school fees at a time when the army is not on routine deployment and the number of service personnel is being reduced,” said Labour MP Madeleine Moon, a member of the commons defence select committee. “I am also concerned that CEA seems to disproportionately favour senior officers, many of whom receive comfortable salaries are based permanently in the UK, over more junior personnel,” added Ms Moon.
And Jonathan Isaby, chief executive of the Taxpayer’s Alliance, commented: “When service personnel are on vital assignments overseas where there is no appropriate school for their children, there is a case for some support to be given to those not earning enough to pay for boarding school fees themselves. However, costs need to be kept down and state boarding school places found where possible because taxpayers should not expect to be subsidising fees for the country’s most expensive schools.”
In a statement, an MoD spokesperson said: “The annual spend on the Continuity of Education Allowance (CEA) has reduced every year since 2009/10 and it continues to fall. CEA is open to all ranks and we are determined that it should go only to those who really need it.”
Douglas Chapman MP, SNP member of commons defence select committee, said: "Ideally the tax payer should not be funding the private education of children whose parents are in the services. We have very good local schools which the taxpayer already funds and they should not have to pay twice. The FOI response clearly shows a unacceptable level of subsidy for private, fee paying schools and, in particular, for the officer classes who benefit disproportionately from the taxpayer's generosity."
Queen Ethelburga’s College: The officers' favourite
Situated between York and Harrogate, Queen Ethelburga’s College describes itself as “the “top independent school in the north” and is in easy reach of major military garrisons at York and Catterick, in Yorkshire. A sports village, swimming pool, laser shooting gallery, and horse riding centre among the facilities at the school, which is set in 200 acres of countryside.
Queen Ethelburga’s College in York offers a ‘forces discount’ of 33 per cent
It offers a ‘forces discount’ of 33 per cent and claims that, taking childcare vouchers into account, parents whose children are studying GCSEs pay just £1,623 a year for an education which would normally cost £32,835. The ‘armed forces’ section on its website states: “The public need to pay a fortune to send their children to Boarding Schools, whereas you can get exactly the same for a small fraction of the price...you really are onto a winner.”
