Taxpayers had to fork out £1.5million to help send children of top Army officers to private schools last year.
A total of £668,000 of public money alone was dished out to Defence Secretary Ben Wallace’s old school Millfield in Somerset – which already rakes in £42million a year from rich parents.
Eton College, which has fees of £44,094, collected £172,000 of Continuity of Education Allowance (CEA) cash, while Prince Charles’s school Gordonstoun, in Elgin, gathered £98,000.
Half a mile down the road from Millfield, an academy school is among the worst funded in the country.
State-run Crispin School Academy has funding of just £5682 per pupil, £1000 less than the national average.
The staggering private school figures, as the nation faces a cost-of-living crisis, were revealed in Parliament last week.
Top brass get education fees partially covered by taxpayers, as part of their package of pay and perks.
It’s dished out by the MoD under the CEA, which covers 10 per cent of boarding school fees for top Forces parents so spouses can join them on postings around the world.
The figures were revealed by Defence Minister Leo Docherty.
Millfield collected the highest contribution, then Eton , which was attended by PM Boris Johnson. This was followed by £164,000 to Ampleforth College, £125,000 to Rugby School and £118,000 to Harrow, where Margaret Thatcher sent her son Mark.
Other schools in receipt of the fees were Charterhouse, Stowe, and Winchester College, where Chancellor Rishi Sunak was a pupil.
In total, 4700 children of Forces personnel benefited from the scheme last year, which cost £81.3million, Docherty said.
Meanwhile, defence chiefs have launched a crackdown on CEA fraud. Last year it was revealed there were 11 cases of suspected boarding school fraud being investigated.
Maj Gen Nick Welch, 57, who was the most senior officer to be court martialled since 1815, was found guilty of dishonestly
claiming £48,000.
In June Lt Col Adam Roberts was convicted of fraudulently claiming more than £44,000 to send two of his children to a boarding school in Suffolk. He was given a 20-month prison sentence and dismissed from the military.
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