'"Buy a house in the area you want to settle, and settle." I quite fancy living in Cornwall, Nikon, but there is not a cat in hell's chance I could practice my profession there. So should I just give up work and go on benefits? (My work is London or Brussels or Paris based.)'
Dh having done the Brussels/Cornwall commute for 2 years, I resigned, rented out the house and moved to Brussels to be with him. Had we stayed commuting, we would have been divorced, as it was undoable for more than 2 years. For those gobbing off - seeing your husband every six weeks is not ideal; acceptable if he is at sea/deployed/down the bunker in Northwood, but not when actually, you could be with him.
There is a termly limit for CEA; if you are lucky, you find state boarding school and you get quite a lot of the fees covered, but you still pay at least 10%. If you choose somewhere more expensive than the termly limit, you pay the excess. The rules are subject to change at any time. Ds is going to a state sixth form with boarding next year as we are due to move in Year 13, and cannot uproot him; especially as we are overseas at present, and would not be able to keep him at his school here when we have moved.
Scruffy shows remarkable ignorance of the rules given that information about the rules is freely available on the internet. As someone who can trump her 30 years of involvement with the Forces, with 45 and counting, she should be ashamed of herself for shit stirring when she knows what CEA is there for.
As for those who say the Forces should be reduced - they are being, substantially, with another couple of tranches of redundancy coming up each year for the next couple of years.
The Forces pay for much of what we supposedly 'get'. Perhaps those interested might look to look at what they are funding for BBC journalists posted in Brussels like Mark Mardell - rent, school fees, a large bill for damage to his rental property after they'd moved out - all out of your licence fee. Those who are Welsh - the Welsh Office pays rent, utilities and school fees abroad. The Forces pay for their accommodation - straight from salary. We do not get the luxury of choosing where we live - it is allocated, and is take it or leave it. We pay for our utilities; we pay more in CTAX for a house abroad than we do for our own place in UK (which is bigger).
In an ideal world, the Forces would post you every 5 years, so you hopefully be able to settle down and schooling would not be an issue. We don't live in that world sadly, and often postings are at very short notice, so how can you arrange a school without an address? Those who are not Forces and post on the education threads about this can testify to the hassle this causes. Try doing it from overseas or hundreds of miles away, and see what school you get allocated.
Not every one claims CEA - when ds was small, we picked up all the fees for prep as he was a day boy, and I didn't move as I worked, so no entitlement. Many suck up the separation as we did for many years to provide stability for their dcs. There does come a point however, when you just can't do it any more and that is where CEA can be useful if your child can deal with boarding. There are on costs for any employer, and if you compare the costs of the training the Forces receive against losing them if you don't pay CEA when necessary, the MoD would be making a loss on much of the investment it has made in submariners, logisticians, weapon engineers, nuclear engineers, bomb disposal experts, engineers (sappers), infantry, fighter pilots, etc. In sheer economics, paying CEA makes sense.