UK Poverty Post

Learning about inequality the hard way

Children in Scotland started back to school this week, and children in England and Wales are into their last few weeks of holidays. There’s a sense of sadness in the air – at the ending of summer, at the thought of missing the kids however tiring it is to spend hours and hours each day in their company. But the relief for parents on low income is almost palpable, as many look forward to an end to the challenges of juggling work with the challenge of non-existent or expensive childcare, and conjuring up extra food for children who would normally get 5 meals a week at school. But there’s dread too. According to a YouGov survey, 51% of parents in households with incomes below £30,000 said they could not afford everything their child needed for the start of the new school year. And these aren’t even parents on low incomes. The median household income is less than £20,000, and a household on the breadline has an income of only around £14,000 per year. The head of Save the Children exposed the real difficulties of low income families when she explained that families in poverty may only have £20 a week to spend on food, never mind the costs of back to school kit. According to the poll, 43% of struggling families said they were likely to have problems buying school uniforms, 26% said they would not be able to buy the full PE kit, and 19% said they struggled to pay for books and equipment.

And while fathers in low income families do experience difficulty, more often than not, it’s mothers who carry the responsibility for these extra costs. Research by the Women’s Budget Group has shown how women are the main managers of family money – and family poverty. They often act as shock absorbers, shielding their children from the main effects of poverty. What this means in reality is that mothers will go without proper meals, and cut back on personal expenses, in order to ensure that their children go to school wearing the right clothes and carrying the stationery, sports kit and other things that they need. This matters both because managing poverty can damage mothers’ physical and mental health, but also because children’s wellbeing is closely linked to mothers’ wellbeing. After all, you don’t get rich children in households with poor parents.

It’s not just going back to school that’s in the news this week – so is leaving school. Young people all over the country are waiting for their A level results, too. And once again the focus is on whether A Level results are actually worth the paper they’re written on, or whether the exams have been ‘dumbed down’ and are now too easy to be meaningful. But the real issue in education is once again overlooked – it’s all about inequality. Children from low income families are less likely to go to university, are less likely to get high grades at GCSE and A Level – indeed are less likely to do A Levels – and are more likely to go to schools facing numerous challenges to providing a solid education. These are the symptoms of a longer-term challenge that results from entrenched economic inequality.

At least there are a few things that all of us can do about the cost of going back to school. The CAB’s Adding Up campaign has some useful tips and action suggestions encouraging parents of any income to tackle their children’s school and their local authorities to deal with this.

Of course, this campaign doesn’t really deal with the deeper, longer-term results of economic inequality, but it might help give parents on low incomes a bit of relief.