An argument has deepened over what is fair funding to help parents on the Isles of Scilly send their children to the mainland in order to study for their A levels.

Anger is growing among parents of children in post-16 education who say they are being unfairly penalised and left thousands of pounds out of pocket because of where they live. They feel the Council of the Isles of Scilly should do more to provide financial support for parents in the unusual position of having to send their children “overseas” to be educated.

Since the Government passed the Education and Skills Act 2008, stating that from September 2014 children would be required to remain in education/training until they are 18, students living on the Isles of Scilly have to move to the mainland as there is no sixth form provision on the islands.

Parents receive an annual payment of £6,365 from the Government’s Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) towards their children’s travel and board. However, many parents are having to find thousands of extra pounds to ensure their children are living in safe, registered digs.

They believe that as the Council of the Isles of Scilly is a unitary authority and therefore the islands’ provider of post-16 education/training – as opposed to Cornwall Council – it should be providing more financial support for parents.

The islands’ council will discuss “Post-16 education sufficiency and provision” at its meeting tomorrow (Tuesday, September 17) where members are expected to agree to a one-off discretionary uplift of £1,635 to the current funding from £6,365 bringing it to £8,000 per student.

The cost for paying the uplift for the current cohort of Year 12 and Year 13 pupils would be £78,480 based on 2024/25 numbers: 16 students going into Year 12 and 32 students moving up into Year 13. The council says the proposal to uplift to £8,000 cannot be funded from existing budgets, therefore it would come from council reserves.

A mother, who has become the spokesperson for desperate parents – many of whom are thousands of pounds out of pocket due to the mandatory need to send their teenagers to the mainland – says she is “disappointed, but sadly not one bit surprised” by the council’s one-off offer.

Taxi driver Sam Mallon
Taxi driver Sam Mallon is spearheading a campaign for fairer funding for students on the Isles of Scilly, who have to travel to the mainland for post-16 education (LDRS)

Sam Mallon, who runs Toots Taxi service on the main island of St Mary’s, said: “There is still the proposal of a one-off uplift to take the grant funding to £8K per child for this year but nothing else.

“There is absolutely no mention of supporting funding for Ofsted-registered boarding which is in stark contrast to the Council of the Isles of Scilly putting in a request to the ESFA a couple of years ago requesting £15K per child per year to cover these costs. How come two years later the Council of the Isles of Scilly thinks £8K is suddenly acceptable?

“No one is asking for private education to be paid for, what we do want, in fact, DEMAND is full funding to be available for Ofsted-regulated accommodation plus travel. If our children were to travel daily the costs would be approx £24K per child per year, which is considerably more than what we are asking for.”

Sam added: “The paper seems to focus more on funding rather than fulfilling their statutory duties and safeguarding our islands’ children. I fail to see how the Council of the Isles of Scilly believe they are fulfilling their statutory duties whilst the DfE states ‘families in rural areas shouldn’t be financially worse off than their urban counterparts’.

“I think the fact that this is a statutory duty and that the Council of the Isles of Scilly haven’t paid one single penny from their overall budget in the ten years since this has been law is unreasonable and is not fulfilling their statutory duties.

“I think the proposals in the paper are unreasonable, so I now have to put my faith and trust in the people who chose to stand, and were subsequently elected to represent us, to do the right thing by the children of the Isles of Scilly on Tuesday.”

The council paper states the local authority is also exploring the potential to commission post-16 supported accommodation around Truro and Penwith College. Suitable land or a property may be identified through negotiations with landowners, including the Duchy of Cornwall.