Children from Low-Income Families: Education Support

Claudia Webbe Excerpts

Wednesday 30th June 2021 Westminster Hall

[Claudia Webbe (Leicester East) (Ind)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) on securing this hugely important debate.

Time and again, children and young people have been failed by this Government. The UK is one of the world’s richest economies, but 4.3 million children and young people are growing up trapped in poverty, with 30% of children, or nine pupils in every classroom of 30, having to combat hunger and stress before they even arrive at school. In my constituency, nearly half of children—almost one in every two pupils in every school—suffer from poverty. That is a damning indictment of this Government’s failure to provide a stable foundation for our children and young people to flourish. Poverty has a lasting damaging impact on the life chances of children and intensifies systematic inequalities.

This has only worsened during the pandemic. A recent National Education Union member survey found that more than half of respondents have seen an increase in child poverty at their school or college since March 2020. The Resolution Foundation predicts that by the next general election, 730,000 more children and young people will be caught in poverty’s vicious cycle. Poverty is holding too many children and young people back, limiting their life chances and creating barriers to their accessing education. A recent survey found that three quarters of teachers said their students had demonstrated fatigue or poor concentration in school as a result of poverty. Shockingly, more than half of surveyed teachers said their students had experienced hunger or ill health because of poverty, while more than a third said their students had been bullied as a result of it. Children accessing free school meals are also 28% less likely to leave school with five GCSEs graded A* to C than their peers from wealthier households. The coronavirus pandemic has increased the pressure facing families on low incomes. A fifth of UK schools have set up a local food bank since March 2020, while 25% of teachers report personally providing food and snacks to their pupils to ensure that they have eaten during the school day.

It is vital that we recognise how young people of all ethnicities have repeatedly been failed by this Government. That is why I was deeply alarmed by the report published last week by the Education Committee, which used selective data to support a preconceived and divisive conclusion that attempts to pit working-class communities against each other. It is true that poor white children struggle academically, which requires urgent focus, yet the Education Committee’s decision to attribute that to use of the term “white privilege”, rather than a decade of Conservative cuts to the services that children and young people rely on, obscures the reality of how class and race intersect in our education system. One only has to look further to see that racial disparities exist across educational attainment, school discipline and university admissions. Poverty disproportionately impacts children and young people of black African, Caribbean and Asian backgrounds, 46% of whom are trapped in poverty. Instead of attempting to create unhelpful divides among children based on their race, we must honestly accept that children from all working-class backgrounds have been badly let down by decades of neglect.

It was not “white privilege” that cut youth services by 73% since 2010; that was the Government. It was not “white privilege” that cut school funding per pupil by 9%; that was the Government. It was not “white privilege” that closed more than 750 youth centres, more than 800 libraries and more than 1,000 Sure Start centres; that was the Government. It was not “white privilege” that scrapped educational maintenance allowance and maintenance grants, and trebled tuition fees; that was the Government. It was not “white privilege” that announced a catch-up funding package that is a tenth of what the Government’s own education adviser said is necessary to make up for the disruption of the coronavirus; that was the Government.

The Government’s neglect of children and young people is a generational betrayal, yet they are now determined to distract from the rampant racial and class inequality that their policies have exacerbated with a trumped-up culture war that is designed to stoke the flames of division. We must oppose this damaging agenda and fight for a future in which all children receive the tools to build a happy and secure life.