We’re delighted to be joining forces with national charity Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) thanks to £2m of National Lottery funding aimed at removing barriers to learning for disadvantaged children.

We’ve been chosen as Child Poverty Action Group’s official project partner as we have both helped schools explore and address the impact of poverty on education.

Since its inception in 2014, our Poverty Proofing the School Day initiative has worked with 59,600 pupils in 129 schools in the North East and 58,900 pupils in 117 schools in other parts of the country.

Now, thanks to the National Lottery Community Fund, a new programme, called UK Cost of the School Day, will be rolled out to schools in Coventry, Neath Port Talbot, the London boroughs of Greenwich, Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, as well as expanding to Moray in Scotland.

The funding has enabled us to appoint a Poverty Proofing Practice Adviser who will be involved in the poverty proofing of the 128 schools involved.

Through a structured, pupil-led approach, staff will work with children and young people, families, teachers, school staff and local authorities to identify ‘cost barriers’ in each school – and to co-design ‘action plans’ to remove them.

Inclusion levels and changes in pupils’ experiences of school will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention throughout the first two years of the project, with the final year focussing on spreading changes that have a positive impact for pupils, beyond the initial 128 schools.

Michele Deans, Operations Director at Children North East said:

“We’re enormously proud of our Poverty Proofing the School Day initiative and we’re delighted to be partnering with Child Poverty Action Group on this important work.

We’re looking forward to using our combined expertise to support more schools across the UK and ensure that every pupil can fully participate in school, regardless of family income.”

Alison Garnham, Chief Executive of Child Poverty Action Group said: “School days are supposed to be the best days of a child’s life, but instead for some children and their families, they can be a source of anxiety if there are extra and unexpected costs for parents.”

“Nine children in every class of 30 are growing up in poverty and although school is free, increasing costs are putting a great strain on families, causing some children to miss out on aspects of school life.”

“This is why we’re delighted with the funding from The National Lottery Community Fund. This project will help schools work out what they can do differently to help to bridge these gaps – by making small changes to school life, they can make a huge difference to a child.”

John Knights, Senior Head of the UK Portfolio at The National Lottery Community Fund, said:

“Thanks to National Lottery players this project will support school children to be able to fully and equally take part in all aspects of school life. Importantly the project is putting young people in the lead to create solutions that reduce the stigma that they can feel and enable them to thrive.”

Child Poverty Action Group has also been working in Scottish schools through its own Cost of the School Day programme. https://cpag.org.uk/scotland/CoSD 

Pupils and staff in schools which have been involved in the earlier Children North East and CPAG in Scotland projects reported a range of cost-barriers to learning, including:

• Subject costs (e.g. materials for Art, Home Economics, IT, and the cost of theatre trips for Drama)
• Not having IT at home for homework
• Lack of money for school trips
• Lack of money for travel-to-school fares (or travel home from after school activities which end after the free bus has left)
• Cost of buying past exam papers and other revision materials
• Cost of hiring and maintaining a musical instrument

A range of bespoke changes were recommended by these projects, to stop financial exclusion at school, including:

• Choosing more affordable school trips, subsidising trips and/ or allowing parents to pay for trips in instalments
• Providing sibling discounts for fun events and trips
• Removing curriculum costs for subjects like home economics and technology
• Providing a starter pack for entry level pupils of bag, pencil case and stationery and setting up homework clubs with resources such as IT
• Reviewing school uniform policies, recycling school uniform items, buying plain blazers and ironing on badges
• Improved promotion of school clothing grants and free school meals
• Sharing bus hire with nearby schools
• Setting up breakfast clubs and breakfast boxes for pupils
• Reducing or removing costs for after school clubs and activities

Poverty Proofing the School Day is a National Programme we have been running at Children North East since 2014.  We developed Poverty Proofing the School Day after a consultation with children and young people.  We gave out disposable cameras to young people and asked them to take pictures of what poverty looked like to them in their communities.  The young people who took part sent us eleven thousand photographs in total, which highlighted the ways that poverty affected their lives.  As a charity that is committed to listening to the voice of children and young people, we asked them how best to respond.

“The answer was clear – for children living in poverty the place where it was most challenging to be poor was at school.”

What does Poverty Proofing the School Day mean?

We felt strongly that it was our duty to make sure costs associated with school do not make things worse for families already struggling to keep their head above water, and that children should not miss out on school activities and experiences because of money. We are also aware that children can routinely face unintentional stigma and discrimination as a result of poverty.  After the initial consultation, we spoke with children, young people, parents and school leaders in four schools in the North East, and the result was the Poverty Proofing the School Day audits that we now deliver in schools across England.

Audits involve speaking to every single child in the school, as well as staff, parents and governors, to identify what the school is already doing well to support children and families living in poverty and, more importantly, what the school could do differently or better to ensure that there is a level playing field.  After speaking to all of the children, we present our findings to the school’s senior leaders, sharing the invaluable feedback from their pupils and discussing specific changes they can make to help their poorest children.  At the heart of this process is an understanding that poverty affects children and communities differently which is why the voice of every child in any individual school is integral to this work.  We are also aware that schools have the power to eliminate these challenges through structural changes to the school day.

“How powerful that the voice and experience of a child can positively influence the decisions of senior leaders!”

Poverty barriers across a range of spaces and activities

Too often in schools, children living in poverty are unintentionally stigmatised, discriminated against, left out or excluded. In our experience this happens across a wide range of everyday spaces and activities in schools: from children in the playground who have a fantastic collection of trading cards while others don’t, to children comparing the branding of their newest bag or shoes between lessons. It extends to school trips where some children are excluded because of the cost, or unable to pick something up from the gift shop on the way out even when they can afford to go. It also reaches to the heart of the classroom, where students are publically given letters about their family’s dinner money debt or forced to put their hand up and declare to the whole class that, as usual, they’ll be on Free School Meals this week. We have also learned that pupils can be given a detention for not being able to afford stationery or ingredients for food technology lessons, which then makes them miss the school bus when there is no alternative way of getting home.

The audit is a powerful experience which puts the voice of children at the centre, and which encourages schools to think creatively and differently about how to respond to the issues children have raised. Ultimately, our aim is not to point out problems, but to work collaboratively with schools to ensure that children in poverty don’t miss out on the education or experiences they are entitled to.

“To date we have worked with 59,599 pupils in 129 schools in the North East and 58,903 pupils in 117 schools elsewhere in England, and these figures are growing every week.”

Listening more closely to the voices of children

We’re very excited about the opportunity to work with Child Poverty Action Group on the UK Cost of the School Day project and build on the impactful work both our organisations have already done. We know that Poverty Proofing and the Cost of the School Day are projects which can positively change the way our most vulnerable children experience school. At a time when increasing numbers of families are struggling to stay afloat it’s our duty, and the duty of our schools, to ensure that we are responding to the issue of poverty with compassion and kindness. We can only do this if we listen more closely to the voices of children and place their experiences of the school day at the very heart of policy and practice.

To continue reading about this partnership, head over to our guest blog from Alison Garnham, CEO of CPAG.

A bit of history…

Children North East was founded in 1891 by two local philanthropists who were concerned about the health of poor children living in Newcastle city centre at the time. The beginnings were relatively modest; they organised day trips by boat down the River Tyne to the seaside at Tynemouth where the air was cleaner and they provided shoes and food for the city’s young people. Well over a century on, growing up continues to be hard and Children North East continues to support families and young people in the region to ensure they grow up to be healthy and happy. We now have 21 different projects to support babies, children, young people and their families and remain committed to ensuring that we are championing equality and tackling disadvantage.

-Georgina Burt