Taxpayers spend £250m sending army officers’ children to elite public schools including Eton and Harrow Taxpayers spent £246 million in the last three years subsidising the private education of officers’ children attending elite schools such […]

Taxpayers spent £246 million in the last three years subsidising the private education of officers’ children attending elite schools such as Eton, Harrow and Gordonstoun.

In the last year alone just eight leading public schools received nearly £2 million under the Ministry of Defence scheme which helps servicemen and women pay school fees.

Tony Blair‘s old school Fettes was paid £441,027 and Eton, which has educated nineteen prime ministers including David Cameron, was given nearly £270,000.

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While the overall annual figure of £80 million remains almost unchanged, Eton, Harrow (£183,000), Marlborough College (£346,000) and Shrewsbury School (£231,000) all enjoyed bumper years, seeing increased MoD payments.

Boosting life chances of ‘privileged group’

Labour MP Justin Madders, co-chair of the All-Party Group on Social Mobility, said the subsidies mostly boosted the life chances of a “narrow and privileged group” in society.

He said: “The senior officers who benefit from the scheme come from very privileged backgrounds. I don’t see why a small group of people should get an elite education paid for by the state.”

He added: “Given the cuts to school funding in the next three to four years and the cuts suffered by the MoD since 2010, these payments are extremely difficult to objectively justify.”

The data, disclosed under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act, also show that 5,216 pupils benefited from the scheme last year, of whom roughly 60 per cent have parents who hold senior officer rank some on salaries over £100,000 a year.

“The aim of the programme is to make sure that the children of service personnel don’t suffer educational disadvantage by having to regularly uproot to follow their parent around the UK/world as they serve their country” Spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence

Why can officers have their children’s education subsidised?

The payments of up to £21,000 a school year are supposed to allow serving soldiers, sailors and airmen to ensure that their children do not have their education disrupted by having to move around the world.

But most of the payments under the MoD’s Continuity of Education Allowance (CEA) fund went to claimants who were stationed in the UK.

Because all claimants must pay at least 10 per cent of the fees most ordinary soldiers are unable to afford to use the scheme to send their children to the top public schools which charge up to £40,000 a year.

This means that almost exclusively it is the senior officer corps whose children go to Eton, Harrow and Prince Charles’s alma mater, Goudonstoun.

Civil servants’ children rack up £400,000 bill

According to the disclosure a further £400,000 was spent on the education of civil servants working for the MoD who are posted abroad.

The programme for government funding of private schools used by the military has come under criticism in recent years.

In 2016 the MoD suspended Clifton College public school from both schemes after a German master was jailed for three years and nine months for taking and possessing indecent photos of 130 pupils.

But last night the MoD said that after a review the suspension had been lifted and the Bristol school, which receives hundreds of thousands of pounds in fees subsidised by the government, had been allowed to return to the military funding scheme.

In 2011 the Government came under pressure to scrap the scheme to save money from the MoD budget. But after lobbying by senior officers the Coalition government changed its mind.

There were reports that Old Etonian officers who had been to school with Cameron had warned him about the damage to military morale.

‘The aim to to make sure children don’t suffer’

Nick Harvey, the then Armed Forces Minister who conducted the review, said: “This review found that the CEA makes a key contribution to operational effectiveness. Therefore no changes have been made to the principles of the system. However, the review did identify room for further efficiencies to be made.”

A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said: “The aim of the programme is to make sure that the children of service personnel don’t suffer educational disadvantage by having to regularly uproot to follow their parent around the UK/world as they serve their country.

“CEA is available to all service personnel irrespective of rank, subject to them satisfying the eligibility criteria, the overarching principals of which are accompanied service and educational continuity. CEA claimants may select from a wide variety of schools across United Kingdom which are published in the MOD’s Accredited Schools Database. This includes schools in both the independent and state maintained sector.”

Robert Verkaik’s book Posh Boys by Oneworld will be published on July 5th