Narrator - In every school, there are more and more children
living in households that are under the grip of poverty. So whilst on the face of it, education
is free, there are often hidden or extra costs that are acting as a barrier to participation.
This film tells us a story about why facing up to child poverty in schools is important.
It prompts us to raise awareness and to stimulate change by engaging children and young people,
the whole school staff, parent councils, families and community planners. It also shares insights
into tools and approaches to assess school costs and implement low-cost, low resource
solutions that will make a difference to children's lives
Child's Voice - Education is free but a lot of school things
are not
Cheryl Burnett - The impact of the cost of the school day on
parents is staggering. It's a hidden cost. It can affect parents in many ways from the
cost of the uniform, from the cost of school trips, to not only, it comes down lunches,
breakfasts and how, PE kit. There's loads of wide variety how it's important how we
raise awareness of the impact of the cost of the school day for parents.
Sara Spencer - So the project, it's been running at CPAG
in Scotland since 2014 and it began in Glasgow, supported by Health and Education and various
other partners. What the project is trying to achieve, it's trying to mitigate some of
the effects of poverty for children and young people from low income households. It's trying
to do that by working out where the problems might be, where the barriers might be financially
for children and young people at school. And where the financial pressure might be for
their families. Currently we're in the middle of a local authority wide project up in Dundee,
and we've helped a whole range of other local authorities think about what their approach
might be to addressing the cost of the school day.
Peter Allan - The council and the community planning partnership
leads an awful lot of the strategic response to inequalities and to better outcomes for
children in a place like Dundee. And the things that have guided us have been the Fairer Scotland
Action Plan and we were delighted that the Dundee partnership's commitment to the Cost
of the School Day was featured as one of the pledges in the action plan.
Susan Epsworth - 15 schools have come onboard, 11 Primary schools,
2 secondary schools and 2 early years settings as well and what we've done with CPAG is gone
into those settings and carried out focus groups with pupils, with staff and also with
parents and we've also spoken to parents at more informal settings like holiday provision
and the school gates as well as sent home surveys and did a bit more work with staff
on surveys and things.
Sara Spencer - So in local authorities who have really focussed
on this as an issue in taking a local authority wide approach to looking at it there are
a few changes I can certainly think of, things like increases in clothing grant levels to
help with uniform affordability, in Glasgow, the automation of clothing grants so that
families actually just get it automatically. There's not that problem with low uptake which
so many local authorities find. I know that in some local authorities, curriculum charges,
costs for accessing subjects have come up as real barrier obviously to children from
low income families taking part. And so those local authorities have invested in removing
those curriculum charges
Child's Voice - Children would be worried about affording basic things
Peter Allan - Our priority is trying to reduce inequality
so the gap in Dundee for the children from better off areas and from the poorer off areas
is really significant and there's not a lot of evidence that we're closing that as quickly
as we'd like. So we wanted to demonstrate from an educational attainment perspective
that we understood the main driver and for us that's levels of poverty and levels of
income for families. So we're never going to address educational attainment and other
poor outcomes for young people in Dundee if we don't do something about poverty and poverty
shows up in so many different ways in school and we wanted to address that and be confident
we were doing something about it.
Susan Epsworth - It's worked best where there's been a real
buy-in at senior management level and I think in quite a few schools a member of staff has
kind of been given ownership of cost of the school day. So they've been our go-between
in the school, they've really helped to organise the pupils, speak to us but they've also been
the person who's gone away and made sure the whole school staffing team from the janitor
to the office to the headteacher really knows what the pupils are saying and that everyone
is best placed to take anything forward, to make a change.
David McNulty - Following on from the initial meeting I was
keen to get initial involvement from CPAG in school. So first of all I went back to
the school and I met with the staff myself and I said I've just been to the cost of the
school day this is something, this project is something I'd like for us to be involved
with and I explained again my own personal reasons for being involved with this but also
realising you know that this is something that I think could really benefit our children
and our families. So I invited a representative from CPAG along to meet and to talk to the
staff which was again very beneficial because right away the staff were on board and I think
that was key. I think we felt this makes sense.
Sara Spencer - There are countless examples of changes at
school level that we've seen from schools that we've worked in and with and some will
sound small but actually can make a huge difference to children and young people. Things like
cheaper uniform, breakfast clubs, homework clubs, support tax SICT resources, stigma
free systems, by which children and young people can ask for support for going on trips,
and greater understanding I think amongst teachers in terms of maybe why a young person
doesn't have a calculator, a pencil, or why the might not be wearing the right uniform
or why they might be late. All of these things which can actually have cost implications,
found greater awareness.
Child's Voice - There's nothing to do at the summer fair if
you don't have money, even throwing a sponge at the teacher costs about one pound. I would just go home
Sara Spencer - There is the cost of the school day toolkit
which brings together a whole range of resources to help schools consult with their own staff,
with children and young people in their school and with families on the cost of the school
day, identifying the barriers, finding out the solutions. There's so much good practice
out there in terms of addressing school costs and child poverty in schools. These issues
have gained a lot of prominence and momentum in recent years but they're issues that schools
have been dealing with forever. Child poverty has always been an issue in Scotland. So there's
lots of practice out there that's really really impactful and I think what we need to do is
be pulling that together and sharing it more widely. You know if a school is wondering
what can we do to increase our free meal uptake or what can we do to make our uniform policy
more affordable or, how can we help with transport. There will be a school out there
who's done it and done it brilliantly and so it's being able to learn from that practice.
Molly Page - I think our vision has primarily been
about supporting schools to understand some of the underlying issues that families face.
The causes, the scale of child poverty and through developing that understanding we then
wanted schools to explore how they could mitigate the impacts. We were never saying to schools,
we're not saying to schools you know you can solve all the problems, you can eradicate
child poverty but what we know through research is that schools can very much mitigate impact
through policies and practices that they implement.
Laura Barnett - So 1 in 5 is the Edinburgh Council poverty
proofing initiative. So we found that 1 in 5 children in Edinburgh are living in poverty
and we've taken that framework and really undertaken a lot of work here in Tynecastle
to try and mitigate against that.
Molly Page - In order to really stimulate change and
to get staff to think about children's experiences and what schools could to do help children,
training was essential. So putting the why behind. Why might a child behave in a way
when they come into school erm and there's a range of risk factors and of course we know
one of the biggest risk factors is poverty.
Laura Barnett - We've trained up the whole school, we've done
whole school training. We've done awareness raising with students and the staff have
really bought into the whole sort of ethos and framework and they've been really supportive
of everything we've done. Right at the start we did a series of assemblies with our students
to sort of raise the issue, to let them know that we were concerned, to make sure that
everybody who attended Tynecastle is treated equally and treated fairly so we did discuss
the idea of poverty. We discussed some of the negative stereotypes around poverty and
why people might feel uncomfortable discussing the topic but our sort of message to them
was if you come to Tynecastle, it doesn't matter about your background, your circumstances,
how much money you have that you will have the same opportunities as everyone else and
if there is something that might make that difficult for you we will try and make sure
that we help with that as much as possible
David McNulty - First of all we wanted to get our children's
views you know that's so important because everything we do affects them so it's essential
we need to get our children's opinions on the cost of the school day. So working together
with CPAG, you know we conducted a series of workshops involving our children you know
gauging their own experiences, getting their own views and really establishing you know
the things that the children were coming up with, actually there were some things we hadn't
actually considered. For example, you know costs of learning and trips, uniform, etc.
These were all things that were brought up by the children and from that we thought right
you know our children, one thing that was very clear that our children are very aware
there are financial hardships. So if our children are aware of that you know that's telling
us something we need to do something about this too
Child's Voice - I think this extra stuff, it puts the kids
under pressure, but it also puts the parents under pressure if they can't afford it. It's
all this pressure and embarrassment that's unnecessary.
Molly Page - One of the first things we asked the schools
to do was to do an audit of all the school trips in order to see what it was they were
charging families and in the school where there were lots of hidden poverty, so as I
say only around 10% of the children were living in child poverty they discovered that actually
over the course of the child's school, time at that school, they were asking parents for
£1000 in school trips and that was a primary school. So through doing the audit it started
to become evident where the costs would be around trips so it was about how could we
reduce those costs.
Cheryl Burnett - It can be really embarrassing for parents
because they don't want to admit that they cannot afford to buy, especially as it starts.
We're coming up to the start of the new term, the new term's about to begin in August. That's
the whole opportunity to go buy and purchase new uniform. That alone is a heavy weight
on a lot of parents minds. If you've got more than one child, school shoes aren't cheap
Laura Barnett - One of the things that we've realised this
year is that we need to be consistent in how we are communicating our message, we've
had a really great buy in from staff, staff are really supportive of this and they've
really been onboard and that's been great because you know that might not have been
the case they might have said why are we doing this. We've never really had that as people
have understood that actually that everything we are doing in the classroom is less effective
if students are not safe and happy and well.
Molly Page - Get in there and train up the staff. Get them
aware of the issues because unless staff are, if staff aren't aware of the issues or they've
not got it in the front of their minds, I think it can easily get forgotten you know
that, that the things that we do in schools, we can have great ideas, that sound fabulous
but actually for some children are very, very problematic so it's getting that awareness,
of how it feels, emotionally engaging with the staff around how it can feel to be a child
who's not getting to take part in things and from there I think you will find that staff
really want to make a difference and they really want to take that challenge on and
see what can be done.
David McNulty - We've already seen how small changes can have
a big impact and it's something you know that now that we all say what about the cost of
the school day, that is a question we are continually asking ourselves here at Avenue End
Child's Voice - People stay off cause they don't have the
money, they think their outfit is silly or they just wear their uniform
Susan Epsworth - There are so many conflicting priorities in
schools and there's all sorts of things coming out seen as the popular thing to do I
suppose from my point of view cost of the school day feeds into everything else. You
know if you're thinking about attainment, well being, even maths and literacy. Cost
of the school day, really, if a child can't come to school because they are hungry or
they don't have the right clothes then they're not going to be able to learn so I think,
I think schools and other local authorities across Scotland, if they can understand actually
small changes make a big difference and it doesn't take numerous members of staff, it
doesn't take thousands of pounds the resource implications aren't actually massive it's about sitting
down as schools and thinking what changes can we make that would make a big difference
to families.
Sara Spencer - So I suppose the changes can be made at local
authority level and or at school level, they are very specific to the setting to the particular
issues in them but I think what they've got in common are they're focussed on making sure
that no child or young person misses out because of their family income, its trying to remove
or reduce opportunities for difference and income related stigma and it's trying to remove
financial pressures from family budgets that are often massively stretched.
Child's Voice - If you don't have breakfast you're starving and you can't concentrate
Laura Barnett - So one of the real highlights of breakfast
club we think is just what a nice start it is to the day it is everybody. And when we
started it last year that we'd hoped maybe you know get a dozen kids along and that you know it
might slowly grow but by the end of the first week we have 40 kids everyday which was amazing.
And one of the nicest things about it is the number of staff that opted in.We didn't think
when we said to staff do you want to come in, 45 minutes early for nothing, maybe a
cup of tea that we'd have lots of people volunteering to do that but actually we had a really, really
great response. I think it's about a third of the staff who've helped out at one time
or another and it's just such a positive start to the day and in terms of building up relationships
it's one of my favourite parts of the day, because you're just having a nice chat
and if you're you know, making someone a bit of toast you know getting them to take a bit
of fruit away with them, make sure they're set up at breaktime - it changes the dynamic
of that relationship later on if you know you have to have word with them about something,
you know, maybe to do with their work or their behaviour that you know you're needing to
address so that's been really, really positive for everybody. I think it changes how children
see us. They see us as individuals first thing in the morning rather than, as teachers
David McNulty - Ultimately you know as teachers, as educators
we all came into this profession to make a difference to children and children's lives.
Our children as we know deserve the very best, we're here and we want children to have those
opportunities that they can do whatever they want in the future and we working together
with our children, with our staff, with our families, everyone in our local community
because together we can actually, we can achieve this and to me you know the cost of the school
day is something that we really need to have embedded in our practice
Peter Allan - Children in Dundee and schools in Dundee are
enormous part of our life in the city and we want to use the cost of the school day
to improve the outcomes for everybody in Dundee.