#UK #HeadTeachers breaking rules to #feed #children & their families - they cannot ignore #poverty @EAPNEurope #Food, #clothes, #transport, #beds, #ovens: the aid #schools are giving #BRITISH #pupils With 3.5 million children living in poverty, and access to #SocialService support very hard to achieve, schools feel “morally bound to do what they can to help. It used to be that #schools raised money for starving children #abroad. Now it appears that they’re having to subsidise #hungry #kids in their own classrooms. Headteachers in schools across the country say they are spending #education money on purely #welfare items to ensure that pupils, and their parents, are fed, have sufficient clothes and the facility to wash them, and have enough money to pay for their #electricity meters. Headteachers are not meant to do this. Schools’ funding is split into teaching and learning, and capital budgets – put simply, that’s staff, books and buildings. Pupil premium money – extra funding for #disadvantaged pupils – should only be spent to raise attainment and achievement. So schools are skating close to the edge: if a family link worker funded by pupil premium money is advising parents on #benefit applications, signposting mum to #MentalHealth services, making referrals to #FoodBanks, and buying beds for pupils, it is difficult for heads to show these have educational outcomes. Increasingly, they are fulfilling a welfare role. One school is helping to pay for a pupil’s #funeral as the family could not afford to #bury their #child, even after selling their car.
Posted on: Tue, 14 Oct 2014 12:09:22 +0000
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