Schools are digging into their own budgets to provide beds and bedding and kitchen appliances like cookers and microwaves to hard-up families as the impact of child poverty worsens.
Leaders also warned that plans to cut benefits, particularly for disabled young people, would make matters worse.
Schools Week has documented how education settings have increasingly been forced to fill the gaps left by cuts to other public services. To make matters worse, almost a third of children now live in poverty.
A survey of National Education Union members found 87 per cent had seen pupils with signs of tiredness or fatigue as a consequence of poverty, while 39 per cent reported physical under-development.
Speaking to journalists at the NEU’s conference in Harrogate, four school leaders laid bare the struggles faced by their schools and others.
Chris Dutton, deputy head of a large secondary school in the south west and chair of the NEU’s national leadership council, said heads had reported spending school funding on “things that you wouldn’t necessarily associate with school budget”.
This included “basic equipment for families, providing things like cookers, providing microwaves”.
For children subject to protection plans, where they “are not being looked-after properly”, schools were even stepping in to provide “basic equipment, things like duvets, pillows, because they just aren’t there in the family home.
“It shouldn’t be coming out of school budget, but we shouldn’t be having children living in these circumstances.”
‘Bed poverty is huge’
Kari Anson, the head of a special school in Birmingham, agreed that “bed poverty is huge”, while her school also now uses its own funding to supplement local holiday club schemes its pupils would not normally be able to access.
“The children might be fed by gastrostomy peg and with the best will in the world, who is trained to be able to administer that? Some children have catheters.”
She said she was “really proud” of the provision, run in partnership with the local council and other organisations.
“We have got children for whom transport is a barrier, and they couldn’t attend if they didn’t get transport, because they’re wheelchair users. So we’ve had to provide transport for some families.
“Staff have had to be trained on how to administer gastronomy feeds, and this is an absolute credit to the 17 staff that have all volunteered to work today on providing that enrichment to prevent that social isolation.”
But she said she did not know if there would be enough funding to repeat the club in the May half term or the summer.
Food banks and heating support
NEU’s survey found 37 per cent of members reported providing food banks or lunches beyond the free school meals allowance. Twenty-nine per cent of support staff reported providing help with uniforms from their own pockets.
High energy costs and upcoming cuts to welfare also worry schools.
“We know that we can give out some payments to pay for heating, but we…have to plan that ahead,” said Michael Allen, deputy head of a primary school in Wiltshire.
“It’s more worries for teachers and leaders, where we want to be focusing on teaching, inspiring people, and we are really sometimes mired in things that we feel that maybe others should have picked up before they get to school.”
Aimee Turner, deputy head of a primary school, also warned of “unseen poverty”, with children unable to access extra-curricular activities because they can’t afford them, and schools can’t afford to provide them for free.
“So many local schools are then having to withdraw all their beautiful after school clubs that they used to offer, things like the sports and the arts clubs, because, again, school funding has been reduced.
“Education always used to be the fastest route out of poverty, and I think now that change in aspirations for our families and our pupils is they can’t see a route out of poverty.”
‘Really scared’ about welfare cuts
The government recently announced cuts to personal independence payments for disabled people.
Anson said she was “really scared about the potential welfare cuts to PIP.
“That will affect a huge amount of young people within the SEND sector. So that really worries me, because that means that things potentially can only get worse.”
She also warned councils were cutting transport funding for pupils with SEND under 5 and over 16, with a “massive impact”.
For special schools, “the implications of poverty are vast because there are so many social barriers”.
Allen said leaders had painted a “bad picture…but what I would like to say is, I think that that schools, in my experience, we do a bloody good job with it.
“We enjoy what we do. We get we get that sense of worth from it. We’re working really hard to help with child poverty. We are succeeding in lots of ways. We find it difficult, but we won’t give up doing that, because we can see all the barriers that’s we now see that as part of our job.
“We have become a safety net, and we’re happy to be that safety net, because otherwise, you know, it wouldn’t be there, would it?”
Daniel Kebede, the NEU’s general secretary, warned today that “child poverty is a political choice, one that has been sustained by successive governments which have failed to get to grips with the solutions.
“It is profoundly worrying that in one of the richest countries in the world, we continue to expect schools to plug the gap.
“A government calling for ‘high and rising standards’ cannot at the same time stand idly by in the face of high and rising rates of child poverty. The government must take action.”
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