Undiplomatic Nonsense - Why FCDO School Fees Are Value For Public Money

 Apparently the Foreign Office is spending £13m to allow diplomats to send their Children to Eton when they could be sending them to our ‘brilliant state schools’. This is the latest claim from the controversial think tank, ‘The Taxpayers Alliance’, a body which seems to exist to prove that some people know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

The genesis of this outrage is a Parliamentary Question which notes that the UK spent approximately £13m to send British diplomats children to boarding schools in the UK and a further £24m for schooling abroad. This is, apparently, a bad thing due to a combination of reasons which seem to range from ‘toff elitism’ through to ‘how dare those ungrateful scum in the public sector expect to leech off hardworking taxpayers like me’, depending on which side of the political spectrum you fall on. What is actually going on?

Firstly, its worth noting that this is a nakedly political attack by Emily Thornberry MP (aka Lady Nugee) and who has made a point for some years now of asking broadly the same question:

“To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, how much funding his Department allocated to the Continuity of Education Allowance to fund places (a) Winchester College, (b) Eton College, (c) Rugby School, (d) Stowe School, (e) Ampleforth College, (f) Millfield School, (g) Charterhouse School, (h) Gordonstoun School, (i) The King’s School, Canterbury, and (j) Harrow School in 2020-21.”

This seems to be a summer ‘silly season’ storm in a teacup and a useful ‘woke blob’ attack to throw on the public sector.  The actual policy is a remarkably sensible one and is a reality of wanting to have a global diplomatic presence. The UK posseses one of the largest diplomatic networks in the world, with over 280 High Commissions, Embassies and Missions located on every continent of the planet. There are around 18,000 staff employed by the FCDO, of whom roughly 6,000 are British civil servants and the remainder are locally employed civilians.

The average diplomatic post will have relatively few British staff based at it – budgetary cuts over many decades have seen a significant decline in the number of more junior staff at these posts – the days of the career Admin Officer moving from Post to Post and only occasionally returning to London are gone forever. The Diplomatic Service is far more focused on putting staff into high profile roles such as Chancery (political, not a spy), Defence (military stuff, not a spy), Trade talks (economics, not a spy) Head of Mission (the boss, not a spy) and ‘cultural attache (definitely a spy if you believe Cold War novels).  The grade and seniority of these roles is such that this group of people will by and large be moving to these roles at a point in their careers when they are likely to have young families with school age children.

Postings abroad can be challenging for Diplomats; they need to choose between going solo and being isolated from their family for up to 3 years at a time – a hard ask at the best of times. They can bring the family with them but this means asking spouses or partners to potentially end their own careers, or in some cases you see Husband & Wife (or variants thereof) working in the same Post but in different roles. However you do it, you are asking people to adopt a nomadic itinerant lifestyle that is both good fun but also incredibly hard work and demanding for young families. It is not unreasonable to expect staff to want to bring their families to Post with them where it is appropriate and safe to do so – and this in turn incurs the challenge of schooling.

The FCDO policy is that where suitable free local English language schooling is available, then Diplomats must use this. At the moment this is only the case in Australia, NZ and the USA. Where this standard of education is not available then the FCDO will pay costs to send Children to a local school that teaches in English to an acceptable standard. This year the FCDO is spending approximately £24m to pay to send 1188 children to local schools this year (this figure covers both FCO and DfID staff who have been fused together in a particularly ‘brave’ departmental merger).

This solution is pretty standard practise and will be mirrored by all other countries with kids in a similar position – it is not unreasonable to expect that if posted abroad, children are given access to education in their primary language. There is nothing ‘elitist’ about ensuring that a 5 year old gets to go to a safe primary school where people speak the same language. This is just common sense.

Similarly, not all posts are safe for diplomats to be accompanied by their families, or for children to be safely educated. The reality of the British global diplomatic presence is that it occurs in locations that are often unsafe or downright dangerous.  Other challenges are that the standard of schools are simply not good enough to give children a satisfactory education. Finally in a small number of cases, legacy FCO staff are eligibly to claim CEA where it is appropriate to do so. In 2019 a total of 338 FCDO staff at all grades claimed CEA (roughly 5% of the FCDO UK workforce) – this was split roughly in thirds of junior staff, mid level management and the SCS. We are lucky that so many women and men join the FCDO and willing volunteer to go to these postings and help support the UK’s global interests. But if Post isn’t suitable for children it is not unreasonable to ensure that their interests are taken care of.

It is a reality too of Diplomatic Service life that people can move from Post to Post very quickly or live in locations that are simply not sensible for families to be brought up in. Friends of the Authors have been based in Moscow, where they described the ever-present stalking by State Security, and the calling cards of papers messed up and turds left in their apartment toilets by the watchers. Former colleagues have been based in Pyongyang, a Hermit Kingdom that is an intensely Orwellian experience, while yet more have served in warzones like Sudan or Afghanistan trying to bring security and represent their Nation. In all these cases they loved their jobs, were proud to serve, but in now way wanted their family to live full time in those circumstances.

In these circumstances offering staff the ability to send their children to school at home, while enabling a career abroad is both proportionate and reasonable. The key thing to note is that the FCDO does not pay the term fees in full, rather it pays a contribution up to a maximum per term ranging from £7000 - £12000 per term. In the case of many of the schools of the list, their termly fee for Boarders is at least £15000 per year. The FCDO policy is clear that staff must pay the difference in fees themselves – so most will be making a personal contribution of £8,000 - £10,000 per year per child to send them to school. Given that FCDO is legendary for poor salaries, this is a not inconsiderable part of the average FCDO base salary (£31,000 per year for an HEO, £49,000 per year for a Grade 7 – significantly under other Whitehall departments) – FCDO staff are not raking it in at public expense – they will be sacrificing significantly to pay for this schooling, like most parents who use private education do.

On social media channels some people argued that the FCDO could send pupils to a State boarding school. It was pointed out that firstly there aren’t that many of those schools out there, many of which are oversubscribed. Also there are reportedly issues with weekend activities which may be problematic for parents based abroad. Additionally others with experience of such matters noted that the boarding fees between most major schools were so close in cost that if you could stretch to go better, why not do so?

There will be some who criticise the fact that the policy enables students to remain at the same school under CEA for up to 5 years after return from Post. This may seem unduly generous but actually is quite sensible – given the average length of posting is 2-3yrs, changing a childs school for a shortwhile to then send them back to boarding school 3 years later is highly disruptive and unfair on the children – particularly as they may be at a critical point in their academic career.

There is always a simmering resentment over CEA, particularly as it applies to the armed forces who also make good use of it. While there is definitely less of a case for CEA for many military officers now that the forces are overwhelmingly based in the UK, it is still a valuable tool for retention purposes of otherwise highly skilled people that may leave. This is perhaps the point that the Taxpayers Alliance misses – it professes to be outraged at the spending of money in this way, but what would it rather do – create the conditions where FCDO Diplomats leave the Service because they cannot see a career pathway that enables overseas tours, or feel that because they are being posted to a challenging location they should leave because they don’t want to be isolated from their families anymore?

This sort of policy is downright stupid. Telling hugely experienced diplomats that they should either like it or lump it is a recipe to lose centuries of accumulated diplomatic experience almost overnight. If you remove the ability to pay to educate children abroad, or to not support boarding fees, people will leave. CEA is not a reason people join the FCDO, but it becomes a strongly compelling reason to stay at the mid – senior career point when getting the kids through school becomes a key priority. This is even before we consider the genuine lunacy of the TPA proposing in all seriousness that diplomats children should attend State Schools – how is this even remotely feasible for parents based abroad (and we’ve noted why it makes sense for those temporarily home in the UK).

This attack feels like yet another all out broadside on the public sector by organisations that seem angry at its very existence. There have been lots of news stories this week about the outrageous news that over 2000 civil servants (so slightly less than 0.5% of the entire total) earn over £100k per year. This has been accompanied in the same breath by articles demanding better public services by recruiting from outside – yet these articles usually miss the point that to get better public services you need to pay market rates to get talent in.

The sort of people at the levels earning over £100k per year will almost certainly be external appointees. The Civil Service promotion system means that you get a 10% payrise on promotion, and in most Departments the SCS1 banded salary means you’re earning about £75k per year. Assuming you promote up to SCS4 (Perm Sec level) you’ll only get a 10% pay rise each time, which means internally appointed Civil Servants at that level will be earning under £100k per year.

In other words, the overwhelming majority of people earning over £100k in the Civil Service are almost certainly the external appointees, who joined late career and came in at much higher starting salaries (but almost certainly taking a pay cut in the process). They’re the ones earning the big money – the same people that the media and thinktanks demand are brought into fix all the problems of the public sector, yet simultaneously its outrageous that they are being paid this money for doing what the media want them to do. Its exhausting trying to keep up with all the logical fallacies in what externals want the public sector to do.

This is the nub of the problem – if you keep attacking the public sector for its perceived ‘perks’ then people will get tired and walk away, leaving a knowledge and skills gap that will later be attacked in Parliamentary and thinktank reports for the clearly foreseeable gap in skills at the heart of the public sector, amid demands for more to be done. If you want world class civil servants, you have to be prepared to pay for this – not much, but you do need to offer people more than just basic salary if you want them to spend years away from their family.

At its heart the curious irony is that the same organisations attacking the FCDO for paying school fees are likely the same people who like to brag about ‘global Britain’ and waffle endlessly on about how we should have diplomats based globally to represent the UK. They want a diplomatic network and the influence that comes with this, but they balk when picking up the bill for it. You can’t have it both ways – if you want diplomacy on the cheap, then fine, but don’t then whinge when the UK loses diplomatic influence and credibility as a result.

It is particularly ironic seeing an organisation professing to care about taxpayers interests attack this. This is the same organisation that had a letter in the Times recently accusing MOD Civil Servants of corruption and demanding that all procurement be done by contractors and the military. Apparently everything would be fine in procurement as long as there are no civil servants involved. That’s a very ‘unusual’ perspective that would be welcomed by industry and contractors, suddenly able to absolutely fleece the taxpayer for more money, but a disaster for the armed forces. The same silliness is true here – attacking the FCDO for spending an absolute pittance of public money to ensure the retention of key diplomats may make easy headlines, but it makes very poor economic sense for the taxpayer.