Fury as parents on UK island facing £20k a year debt to send kids to school

Desperate parents on a beautiful British island are racking up £20,000 a year in debt just to send their children to school.

Families say around 40 kids a year are marooned when it comes to sixth form and college education on the stunning Isles of Scilly off the southwest coast of Cornwall.

English law requires all 16 to 18-year-olds to be in education or training up until the end of the academic year during which they become an adult.

The Isles of Scilly is 27 miles from the UK mainland, and around 30 miles from the nearest post-16 school facility. It is one of only two UK areas where there is no local sixth form education, the other is the City of London where children can walk or catch a free bus to lessons nearby. 

Local authorities have a duty to fund transport and accommodation costs, but parents on the islands say they are forced to shell out up to £20,000 a year themselves to transport their children to school, and to pay for either unregulated accommodation with a host family or for more expensive regualted state boarding school facilities in term time. 

Documents seen by the Express show the Isles of Scilly Council have previously applied for £10K per student combined with an additional £6,000 from the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA).

But this year parents have been offered just £8,000 per child, mostly made up from ESFA funding plus just £1,635 from the council, approved after a vote on September 17. 

Shockingly some parents just can’t afford to send their kids for the education they are legally entitled to.

Mrs Mallon, who runs her own taxi firm, has had to start a second job making chocolate in the evenings to make enough money to send her son Jacob, 17, for an education the state should be funding. She pays around £17,000 a year for Jacob to stay at the Peter Symonds state boarding school. 

“It’s an injustice”, she said. “I’ve started up another business, between my husband and I, we now have three businesses. I’m working on my evenings and my weekends to help us fund our son’s education.

“The Government can fund children to fly 8,000 miles from the Falkland Islands for education here, and rightfully so, but they can’t work out how to support children living just 27 miles away, it’s a travesty.

“We’ve had other people who have taken out loans, we’ve had parents using life savings, we’ve got other people borrowing money off family just so their children aren’t put in unregulated digs. We shouldn’t be put in this position because our children have the right to an education.

“We shouldn’t be financially worse off because our children are having to travel further than their mainland counterparts. We’re the only area in the UK that doesn’t have fully funded post-16 education.

“We want our children to have parity with their mainland counterparts.”

Parents are demanding funding for their children to travel and Ofsted registered accommodation for them to stay on the mainland during term times. At present Mrs Mallon said parents face the choice of ‘unregulated digs’ with kids staying with host families they have never met which is why she and her husband feel safer sending their son to boarding school. 

The Scilly Isles is the only UK island population facing this type of crisis. In the Western Isles of Scotland post-16 education is provided and funded for each island population.

On Orkney, the Shetlands, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands post-16 education is available locally. And incredibly even children from the Falkland Islands, 8,000 miles from the UK, have all their travel and accommodation funded.

Under the Education and Skills Act 2008 the law requires children to stay in education until the end of the academic year in which they turn 18.

Mrs Mallon, who was born on the Isles of Scilly, revealed she and a group of parents are now launching a bid to raise £10,000 to launch legal proceedings against the local council by mid-December.

As part of this fundraising drive Mrs Mallon intends to shave off all her lovely long silver hair so she “look councillors in the eye” showing them how much it means to her.

She added: “My hair will grow back, and I’ve got broad shoulders, but I want them to see me. I’m driving my taxi in the daytime and making chocolate at night to fund my son’s education and keep him safe and happy and help him excel whilst the council are refusing to help.

“I am going to be delighted with my bald head and them all having to look at me. If I don’t do this we lose our right to appeal and they’ve got away with it.

“We’ve not had a holiday for three years because we knew this was coming, there are some people who just can’t raise the money.”

Fellow parent and islander Lynn Blackwell is a mum of twins, Tom and Maddie, 17, and said by the end of next year she and her fisherman husband will “have spent around £40,000 of savings and money I haven’t earned or borrowed yet” funding her children’s education.

Mrs Blackwell, who runs the family timber merchants, said: “I feel very wronged that I have paid income tax which funds education but here I am having to fight for all the children on the islands right to receive free education or access to it.

“It is wholly wrong and our voices have had to become very loud now to try and get the Government to listen and put it right.

“Whilst we are focussing on this and saving hard, our children are missing out on family holidays and our time is spent working to earn the money – I have a timber merchant shop, my husband is a commercial fisherman, and we have a holiday let but everything is going to pay for post 16 boarding and travel.

“We don’t know why we are not being funded, no one has been able to tell us.”

A spokesperson for the Isles of Scilly Council said the authority made a statement on October 29 in which it said it “does not have a responsibility to fully fund all costs associated with post-16 provision but in uplifting the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) grant from £6,350 to £8,000 for this academic year the Council believes that the £8,000 is close to covering the majority of costs associated with a host family solution”.

A spokesperson told Express.co.uk: “The Council’s current position on the provision of services to which your query relates is as set out in the statement made on 29 October 2024.

“The Council is currently taking the steps as approved at the Full Council meeting on 17 September 2024 and continues to work with the parents and young people in post 16 education and training, its members, local MP, Government and other partners and stakeholders as part of its drive to continuously improve its services.”

A DfE spokesperson said: “This government has a driving mission to break down barriers to opportunity.

“We are committed to ensuring our post-16 education system gives young people the best life chances.

“The department is aware of the situation on the Isles of Scilly, and has provided support to Isles students for some time and we will announce available future support for students from the Isles in due course.”