Transport for London has agreed to supply English UK and its affiliates with discounted group travel tickets after some lobbying paid off for Ruth Fenton, managing director at Stafford House Study Holidays, part of Cambridge Education Group.

The reduced fees for education providers reflect a third off standard prices introduced in 2015 that would have increased group travel by some 400% on the previous year- a considerably larger mark up than the 3% language school providers had estimated and printed in their marketing material.

Fenton said the increase would have cost the school more than £100,000.

Ruth Fenton, Managing Director at Stafford House Study Holidays, wrote to MP Vince Cable after finding the rise in fees “ridiculous” considering the economic contribution of international students to London’s economy

“It was a huge increase,” she told The PIE News. “We’d all done our brochures in time for StudyWorld and Alphe in September so that cost was something we would have to absorb, but I thought about it and I thought it was ridiculous.”

Last year, Stafford House purchased 28,500 of the tickets for students attending their summer programmes for £1.80 per child. In November, TFL announced its 2015 fees however which bumped up the price to £4 for children and £8 for adults as well as changing the classification of a child to a person under 15 where previously it was 18.

“My students spend a fortune; they bring in billions if you add all of us together, it’s a huge amount of money we bring to the economy.”

According to English UK, in 2013 the English language sector in Greater London had an estimated value of £770bn.

“How could it possibly be that one of our suppliers put the price up? It seemed morally wrong, so I wrote to my MP,” said Fenton.

Fenton contacted the MP for Twickenham, Teddington, Whitton & The Hamptons, where she lives, Vince Cable, who intervened on her behalf.

Fenton, along with English UK representatives, met with TFL leadership in London last month and recently received confirmation from Cable’s office that the company would roll back fees to 2014 prices for education providers until the end of the year.

“This transitional arrangement will apply to the end of December 2015 and is intended to ensure that providers are not financially disadvantaged and have time to adjust to the new prices and terms, given the lead times involved in publishing brochures, prices etc,” a TFL spokesperson told The PIE News.

Fenton said she is “pretty pleased” with the reduction however will work to have the adult classification raised to 18 again.

“Everybody in our industry and particularly people in large summer school operations are overjoyed because that’s a huge saving and it’s a vote for common sense and democracy in the UK,” she said.

“Most people in the countries we work with could not go and write to their MP and get a result like that.

“I never expected to get that much, but they still made 16-year-olds adults, so didn’t win that but I’m not giving up entirely,” she added.