The pandemic has shown the extent to which families rely on
schools for ‘basic needs’ such as access to an adequate supply of
food and help in accessing other support services, highlights new
UCL research.
The briefing report, published today, includes in-depth
interviews from 50 parents and staff across seven schools around
England and found that schools serving populations with high
levels of poverty shouldered a significantly higher burden in
addressing problems relating to food insecurity and housing.
The schools were located in parts of the country that had
experienced higher or lower prevalence of Covid from March 2020
to March 2021 and varied in the number of pupils on Free School
Meals (FSM) in relation to the national average.
Due to pressures linked to the pandemic, the research found that
more families turned to schools as an important source of
support. Among the issues schools reported dealing with included:
children in need of food and clothing; families living in
inadequate housing with inadequate space and resources to
maintain learning at home; families with limited digital
connectivity; individual pupils facing mental health crises and
children experiencing difficult domestic circumstances, including
domestic violence.
Co-author, Professor Gemma Moss (UCL Institute of Education)
said: “We know Covid-19 has directly and indirectly affected
schools and families in very different ways. Communities where
children were already living in poverty but also those where
families suddenly faced new financial distress due to COVID have
been very badly hit.
“Funding offered through Pupil Premium does not cover or
adequately reflect the work schools do to support children living
in poverty or struggling with difficult issues at home. That
families are so reliant on schools highlights fundamental
weaknesses in our current welfare system that urgently need
repair.”
Addressing food insecurity was the most immediate priority for
all the schools in the study and schools went to considerable
lengths to ensure that all their pupils received at least one
meal a day, in some cases distributing food directly from the
school to the door.
One headteacher said: “What we’ve noticed over time was that the
people who were coming to our food pantry, and we still run it
now, weren’t the free school meal parents. […] It was this tier
just above, the people who’d been furloughed, the people who had
always had a job.”
Schools also raised concerns about children living in
sub-standard housing which was wholly unsuitable for learning.
Another headteacher said: “[They] lived in a flat, which was
temporary accommodation, that was infested with rats. And holding
all of that was really, really tough because she was in danger
and so were her children - and living with rats. I mean, it was
just awful.”
Co-author Professor Alice Bradbury (UCL Institute of Education)
added: “Our research shows that the lack of services that support
children, particularly Child and Adolescent Mental Health
Services (CAMHS) and emergency housing for domestic violence
cases, puts schools in the position of first responder, coping
with families facing complex challenges.
“Schools are picking up the pieces from a welfare and social
services system that no longer provides a real safety net for
families. For those schools, the impacts of poverty on children’s
lives are impossible to ignore.”
The authors say policy funding for education needs to focus on
building system resilience over the longer term and that the
current settlement on offer is not enough to fix the many issues
the school system in England faces and which COVID has so sharply
revealed.
The Learning through Disruption research project ran between
May-August 2021, with funding from the Economic and Social
Research Council.
G Moss, A Bradbury, A Braun, S Duncan, R Levy Learning
through disruption: Using schools’ experience of Covid to build a
more resilient education system will be published here on Thursday 14
October and is under strict embargo until then
