Children in blue school uniforms eating lunch

Child poverty

The NEU’s No Child Left Behind campaign is fighting to break down the barriers poverty puts up around education.

Join the campaign

In the UK today, 30 per cent of our children – 4.3 million – are trapped in poverty. That means nine pupils in an average class of 30 have been let down.

Wealth is a significant predictor of how well children get on in school. By GCSE level, poorer pupils attain on average 19 months behind their wealthier peers. We also know that some children are more likely to be affected by poverty than others, such as Black children and those with SEND.

This cannot be right, which is why we are campaigning for an education system where every child can thrive, and no child is left behind.

Free School Meals for All

As educators, we know first-hand how poverty limits the life chances of children and significantly affects their educational experience and outcomes in school. We are calling on the government to expand the lifeline of free school meal provision to every child, starting with those attending primary school.

No school should have to run a food bank – however it is a national scandal that schools are now the biggest providers of foodbanks in the country. Join our Free School Meals for All campaign and add your voice to the growing call that no child is left behind. 

The government’s Child Poverty Strategy

The government has established a Child Poverty Taskforce to write a cross-government Child Poverty Strategy to reduce and alleviate child poverty in the UK. The NEU welcomes the government’s commitment and has worked with Child Poverty Action Group to develop a set of recommendations for the Taskforce to implement. 

Our recommendations are organised into three categories: increasing family incomes, alleviating income-related inequalities in education, and removing barriers to education and reducing the cost of the school day.

  1. The Child Poverty Strategy’s priority must be to increase families’ incomes. To make any headway in reducing child poverty, the Government must scrap the two-child limit and benefit cap. This will lift hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty overnight.
  2. To support children in school, the Government needs to alleviate income-related inequalities, starting by investing in free school meals for all. Primary school staff in London and Wales already see the many benefits of providing every child with a delicious and nutritious school meal – why should children in England miss out? Universal free school meals boost health, learning, behaviour, lifetime incomes and the economy.
  3. To ensure all children can get the most out of school, the Government must remove barriers to education and reduce the cost of the school day. Uniforms are parents’ biggest school cost worry, with families forking out hundreds of pounds per year. The Government must tighten the uniform guidance to limit the costs of uniforms, and grants should be available for families who are struggling to buy uniforms.
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Turning the page on poverty

A practical guide for members to develop individual practice and tackle the impact of poverty on pupil learning throughout the school day.

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