There’s a story doing the rounds today about St Paul’s School in London offering bursaries to pupils whose parents earn a combined salary of up to £120,000 a year.
The school believes the costs of private education in Britain have become so prohibitive that its traditional middle class clientele do not earn enough to cover its £23,500 day school and £35,000 boarding fees.
The better-off members of the middle class, so often the butt of every tax governments dream up, can no longer keep up.
On top of this, private school fees have risen by 550 per cent since 1991.
So it’s interesting to see that Labour MP Rachel Reeves has dug up some figures showing that 179 Foreign and Commonwealth Office diplomatic officers stationed in the UK are in receipt of school fees.
During the last financial year this cost taxpayers £6,005,124.
According to the rest of the answer Reeves received: “The total cost of a further 173 diplomatic officers stationed overseas in receipt of school fees is £6,403.938. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office pays and supports a further 1108 children who are stationed with their parents and educated locally with a total cost of £14,207,444.”
So the Foreign Office spends more than £25 million per year on school fees.
For staff based abroad, it’s understandable that school fees for their children would be paid.
But those stationed in the UK?
The taxes of many couples who earn a combined salary of, say, £110,000 will have allowed these UK-based Foreign Office staff to send their children to independent schools, while they themselves might not be able to do so.
Without knowing more about the individual cases, it’s difficult to comment further.
But this £6 million figure will likely stick in the craw of all taxpayers – particularly those struggling to pay school fees out of their taxed income.
Why does the Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, make of it?