ATL

80% of education staff work with students who live in poverty in the UK - ATL

Nearly 80% of education staff said they have students within their school or college living in poverty, according to a survey conducted by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL).

Four in ten said they think poverty has increased amongst pupils since the recession began three years ago.

A teaching assistant in a West Midlands secondary school, said: "Every day I become aware of a child suffering due to poverty. Today I have had to contact parents because a child has infected toes due to feet squashed into shoes way too small."

Craig Macartney, a secondary school teacher from Suffolk, said: "More children from middle to lower income families are not going on school trips and these families find it difficult to meet the basic cost of living. A family with two or three teenage children who have one earner who loses hours, or their job, will struggle to reach the minimum income to pay for basics. This will get worse as the impact of the cuts affects families. The number of young people with mental health problems has been on the increase in the last three years."

A teacher from Halifax, West Yorkshire, worked with a "boy with no underpants - when changing for PE, others laughed."

The survey also revealed that 86% of education staff believe that poverty is having a negative impact on the general well-being of their students, with 80% saying that students living in poverty come to school tired, 73% said they arrive hungry and 71% said they lack in confidence. Among sixth form and further education students, a lack of confidence was cited as the most significant impact of poverty, by 77% of staff in further education (FE) and 70% of staff in sixth forms.

Anne Pegum, an FE teacher in Hertfordshire, said: "We have students who miss classes because they cannot afford the bus fare or cost of other transport to get to college. We have students who miss out on meals because they do not have money to pay for them and in some cases then feel unwell and have to be helped by our first aiders."

Another teacher working with sixth form students in Nottingham, said she had a student who "had not eaten for three days as their mother had no money at all until pay day" and was aware of students who "work long hours to pay for their bus passes and food."Eight in ten education staff (81%) said they believe poverty has a negative impact on the educational attainment of students within their school or college, the main effects being under-achievement (85%) and lack of pupil motivation or aspiration (77%). Staff believed other significant impacts of poverty on educational attainment were lack of a quiet place to study at home (74%), pupils not doing their homework (72%), pupils unable to concentrate (66%) and higher absence levels (66%).

Jane Hill, an FE lecturer in Worcester, said: "There is a change in attitude of lower sixth students towards higher education. Many feel it is beyond their economic reach now and are somewhat disaffected in terms of their attitude towards study and A levels."

Staff felt overwhelmingly that one-to-one support was important to help pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds to stay and succeed in education (64%), followed closely by better pupil to staff ratios in schools and colleges (51%), and extending eligibility to claim free school meals (51%).  Of those teaching sixth form and FE students, the two most important measures identified by staff for helping disadvantaged students were improved, low-cost transport to and from school or college (723% of staff working in FE and 62% staff working in sixth form) and re-establishing the Education Maintenance Allowance (58% of staff working in FE and 58% of staff working in sixth form).

ATL general secretary, Dr Mary Bousted, said: "It is appalling that in 2011 so many children in the UK are severely disadvantaged by their circumstances and fail to achieve their potential.

"What message does this government think it is sending young people when it is cutting funding for Sure Start centres, cutting the EMA, raising tuition fees and making it harder for local authorities to provide health and social services.

"The government should forget empty rhetoric about social mobility and concentrate on tackling the causes of deprivation and barriers to attainment that lock so many young people into a cycle of poverty."

To view the full survey stats click here.

Notes to editors

1. The Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) is an independent, registered trade union and professional association, representing approximately 160,000 teachers, headteachers, lecturers and support staff in maintained and independent nurseries, schools, sixth form, tertiary and further education colleges in the United Kingdom.

2. ATL exists to help members, as their careers develop, through first rate research, advice, information and legal advice.

3. ATL is affiliated to the Trades Union Congress (TUC), Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU), European Trade Union Committee for Education (ETUCE) and Education International (EI). ATL is not affiliated to any political party and seeks to work constructively with all the main political parties.