Changes to CEA

[MaroonMan4]

I do feel sorry for those genuine CEA claimants left behind in the wake of the the Prime Minister's cuts (and let's be honest here we can attempt to hold the civil serpents, or Dr FOx or either the Chancellor responsible for the lowest service morale for 2 generations - my once serving father talked of very poor officer morale in the 70s).

This moral covenant is also all smoke and mirrors - what exactly is Government of the day legally bound to do for service personnel? Tip up in parliament and 'report' - is that it?

But back to this thread and CEA, and I only have one more term to see through before I am out of the system (in more ways than one!)......but what I cannot fathom out is:

1. What will replace the current system that allows the relevant personnel agencies of each service the flexibility to move people around when each service requires it?
2. The very weighted and one sided questionaire that gives no choice or scope to add free text (and statistics carefully manipulated by the organisation commissioning the survey can demonstrate any side of the argument).
3. Before the 'survey' was sent out the respondents had absolutely no knowledge of the alternatives that were available:
- Has the MOD and Dept of Education agreed to relax catchment areas for serving personnel to enable service children to stay with friends and relatives?
-When service families do leave their children with friends and family to ensure continuity of education through key academic years, who will be paying for accommodation and lodging?
- Once the tour of duty is complete away from their 'home super base' can the children stay at the state school, outside of their parents catchment area even though their parents have moved back into the area (but out side of the catchment area of the school where the friends/relatives live).
-For some large garrison or station locations has the Local Education Authorities been consulted on the possible mass influx of service children?
- Will service families be forced to send their children to military schools and will these schools have a military system in place (this works for some parents, but others want their children as far a way as possible from the military for their education)?
- What is the current OFSTED status of some of the military schools on offer (loaded question).
- As per the CEA survey option, is it recognised that increasing the contribution will remove the eligibility for some ranks, and be deviscive through the services?
- Is there recognition in those that set the questions in the survey that leaving a wife to look after a children at your nominated base location will after the average 22/16 year career result in many marriage breakdowns, on top of the stress caused by operational tours and the current reduction in allowances.
- Is the Depmartment of Edloucation confident that an MOD payment of around £200-£250 per service child is enough to ensure the increase in resources and infrastructure required by some state schools in the proximity of (for example) Brize, Salisbury Plain, Colchester, Catterick etc?
- If service families no longer declare themselves mobile and the children are in key stages of education (GCSEs/A Levels) can they legally remain in post until after the children's exams have been completed?
- Once the personnel department has told the service family that they are no longer mobile then does that mean that they can no longer be given short notice (often global) postings or does the service lose that flexibility?
- What happens when a service claimant's mobility is removed, then reinstated, then removed (all feasible now under the new rules) - what happens to the child (into boarding school, out of boarding school, into boarding school?)
- Why wasn't the MOD's own specialist CEA 'advisory service' not been consulted by DASA (the MOD's own statistical analysis agency) in ensuring a fair, unbiased, apolitical and rationale process (not just sliding scales of statistical weighting software).
- How much did the DASA CEA cost the MOD or was it paid for by the Treasury?

Now if I were a service parent about to sit down and complete a CEA questionnaire with such importance for my future family and education of my children, then the above questions are but a few that I would ask.

What the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the myriad of Civil Servants beavering away to rush through cuts to hit financial targets are forgetting is that unlike the Private Sector, and elements of the Public Sector, the nation's military relies on the conceptual component of fighting power, as well as the physical.

If this is the aim, and the best of the UK's military minds and workforce are forced to leave (or opt to leave due to eroded pay and conditions) then the military will not only have no equipment, but when called for duty and to lay down their lives will be missing that unquantifiable and hidden (to the treasury and those that have never experienced it) values that this Government will go down in history as removing.

Never has the world been so unstable and yet the nation's military is retreating into an isolationist shell.

Let's hope that the same lesson after the 1920s depression are not painfully re-learned again in the next few decades.
I have, and CEAS deny all accountability for the survey and have absolutely no idea what will replace it or how the (non) mobility of service personnel will be managed by each service in the future.

Good luck to all those genuinely claiming and still left in when all this is over.