Kerrching-kerrching......for those based in UK it is ENDEX

Not in Tuesdays budget but soon to follow in SDR

....according to my mate Chalkie anyway

If it applies to The Army,it must apply also to The Foreign Office,ODA and other hangers on?

If this is true it's going to be interesting. CEA, rightly or wrongly, has come to be a significant retention incentive for many...

[quote="seanbean"]If this is true it's going to be interesting. CEA, rightly or wrongly, has come to be a significant retention incentive for many...[/quote]

Many officers mainly ........

Originally Posted by GrumpyGit

Originally Posted by seanbean

If this is true it's going to be interesting. CEA, rightly or wrongly, has [b]come to be a significant retention incentive for many...

Many officers mainly ........

That's because officers move about far more often. There are still many non-officers that use CEA.

It's been squeezed for FCO for some time for officers in UK. I think there you are inelegible already unless you already have one overseas posting under you belt, or personnel are ready to state you'll be posted in the next while. There are already break points (end prep school, end GCSEs), so there was no guarantee that the entire education would be funded.

FCO can expect to be treated differently to the armed forces as a
muchhigher proportion of it's staff are overseas. Don't know if that's true of DfID as a Dept, or what the arrangements are for MoD (which is the dept with most people posted abroad), or for other depts who post staff overseas (eg trade and visa staff), nor what will happen for military personnel posted as military attaches in diplomatic posts if key dates in the children's education do not fit the postings plot.

How will schools in garrison towns cope with the surge in demand?

Interesting, but just because you are in the UK does not mean that you can achieve continuity of education, nor indeed will paying CEA whilst someone is posted abroad as many postings are for 2 or 3 years, and then back to the UK, hardly achieving the aim.

Looking at the larger picture how would the schools in the various garrisons cope with a large influx of children if schools do not have capacity to take additional pupils?

I am not saying that CEA is not open to cuts, the civil service has been after it for years but the practicalities of providing education for service children is far more complex than it seems.

Originally Posted by vampangua

...Don't know if that's true of DfID as a Dept, or what the arrangements are for MoD (which is the dept with most people posted abroad), or for other depts who post staff overseas (eg trade and visa staff), nor what will happen for military personnel posted as military attaches in diplomatic posts if key dates in the children's education do not fit the postings plot.

The biggest claimers of CEA in Germany are SCE teachers.

For a number of reasons I don't think CEA will go entirely, but the screw will gradually tighten.

One possible next step is to limit it to key stages of education (basically 13-1 for those already meeting the eligibility criteria.

Or an expansion to state boarding provision?

Boarding Free schools (under new rules)?

Then only the boarding element would be payable, making the fees roughly half that of independent. And same rate would be all that was on offer to parents who sent their children to independents anyway - that covers the continuity element, and it would be left solely to parents to decide if they wanted to pay for a non-State/Free tuition component.

Full fees payable only if there were genuinely no vacancies in state boarding schools - something that could easily be monitored. And something that would becomer rarer as provision developed to meet demand.

And I suppose the Free school concept would also cover surge in demand in Garrison towns. Take the idea on a thread I saw yesterday about setting up a school with a military ethos; develop this into a set of schools following a curriculum in the same order (so the children don't end up doing Vikings three times and Romans never etc), and it could be a winner.