BENJAMIN Rees (South China Morning Post, December 28) is right to doubt Mr Ken Woodhouse on the subject of the English Schools Foundation's fees remission scheme.
Mr Woodhouse has recently taken pains to insist that the scheme, which administers government funds, was never intended for people who couldn't afford ESF fees.
He says it is and always was only for the affluent who ''suddenly and unexpectedly'' fall on hard times.
One can only assume that before making this new announcement he carefully weighed the implication of taxpayers bailing out this group against the embarrassment of ever-increasing numbers of people unable to afford ESF fees.
My recent experience shows that the scheme is not really what Mr Woodhouse says it is. Our family fit squarely into the newly defined target group. We were, albeit uncomfortably, managing to send three children to an ESF school, when suddenly and unexpectedly this summer, our income was cut by two-thirds.
Not knowing the new definition of the fee remission scheme, we saw no other way to make ends meet than to split the family up and put two children in free public schools in North America. One parent and child stayed here.