Child poverty strategy ignores schools as ‘central partner’, says Teach First

The child poverty strategy has “missed opportunities” and “lacks focus” on improving educational outcomes, Teach First has warned.

The teacher training charity has provided written evidence to the joint work and pensions committee and education committee inquiry into the strategy, which aims to lift 550,000 children out of poverty by 2030.

Government figures suggest about 31 per cent of children in the UK are living in relative poverty after housing costs.

The strategy will create a duty for councils to notify schools about homeless pupils.

It also said the rollout of free breakfast clubs, expansion of free school meals and limited number of branded school uniform items will help families save money.

But Teach First said the plan “does not sufficiently address the role of schools in mitigating the ongoing impacts of child poverty”.

Teacher Tapp polling from 2025 found 68 per cent of schools were using their budgets to provide uniforms, while 60 per cent were paying for food for hungry pupils, and 46 per cent were buying sanitary products.

“The child poverty strategy should position schools as a central partner in tackling child poverty, recognising their wide reach and their day-to-day understanding of children’s lives,” Teach First said.

‘Missed opportunity’

Its evidence to the committee continued: “We believe the strategy’s lack of focus on improving educational outcomes is a missed opportunity, given that education is the primary vehicle of social mobility.

“Strong schools that support high aspiration and attainment for children living in poverty are essential to build community trust in the value of education and ultimately break the cycle of poverty over generations.”

While the recently published schools white paper contains aspirations to cut the attainment gap in half, this is not included in the child poverty strategy, published in December.

Teach First said that while the strategy recognises the impact of poverty on educational attainment and future earnings, the target to halve the attainment gap should be a “key” part of the child poverty strategy.

This ambition should be shared between departments, the evidence said, as the attainment gap was heavily influenced by factors outside school.

Meanwhile, evidence submitted by the National Education Union to the same inquiry said the strategy “lacks ambition and fails to address core income drivers of poverty”.

‘Marginal dent’

The NEU, which represents 480,000 education staff members, said the removal of the two-child benefit cap and the expansion of free school meals would only make a “marginal dent” on the rate of child poverty.

Like Teach First, the union said the strategy “emphasises the importance of education throughout but provides no vision for it”.

The North East Child Poverty Commission has called for the government to introduce auto-enrolment for free school meals as part of the strategy.

Its evidence said “a significant amount of local time and capacity is currently spent identifying and enrolling as many families as possible, which is unnecessary when the government already holds the data required to do this”.

A letter sent by the Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza to the inquiry said the evaluation of the strategy “could be trying to achieve too much”.

“The evaluation needs to have an unshakeable focus on whether that progress is being made or not, and not be diverted into attempting to be an evaluation of every different policy intervention being delivered,” de Souza wrote.