I WRITE regarding the story (Oxford Mail, February 21) about the bid by the Oxford Montessori School to become the first free school in Oxfordshire to offer a Montessori education.
There seems, from the feedback and the letter from David Buckwell, to be a strong public assumption that by funding the free schools from the LEA budget the taxpayer will, somehow, end up paying more for education than they should.
However, each of the children at the Montessori School come from tax paying families. No matter what the reason is why the children are not at state controlled schools their parents have paid their taxes just like everyone else.
The LEA presumably has a set education budget for each child in the area. It seems wrong to me to say that because parents have decided that state schools are unsuitable for their child, they should not benefit from the LEA education budget for their own child.
I see no justifiable reason why all parents should not be allocated an education voucher each year, to the value of the LEA budget for the child’s education for the year, which they can then spend at a school of their choice. This is what currently happens at nursery level. Is there any reason why it shoud not be carried through until school leaving age?
Of course, the voucher should be sufficient to fully pay for a child to attend a state run school, and if the value of the voucher is less than the fees of a private school the parents should pay the difference. This way everybody gets what they have paid for in their taxes; nobody benefits more than anyone else and parents have a choice.
We are parents who have taken our children out of the state school system here in Oxfordshire because it is so bad. However, we cannot afford to send them full time to the Montessori School, no matter how hard we try.
The school has tried very hard to offer us as much help as possible to allow our children to go full time but we still can’t afford it.
As a result, we pay for as much time at the school as we can and home educate the rest of the time.
We both work full time as well and, as I am sure you can guess, this puts a huge strain on family life.
The current system is unfair. We will be paying towards education for our whole working lives and should be able to benefit from our contribution in the same way as anyone else.
Clare Free, Rochford Gardens, Bicester
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