Can Education Remove the Barriers a Poor Background Creates?
Blog Edition 9 August 2023. This edition addresses the question and examines the relationship between poverty and education.
‘I know only too well the barriers that children in this country face. That is why as Labour’s next education secretary, I am determined to make sure that background will be no barrier to getting on.’
Bridget Phillipson (Shadow Secretary of State for Education)
‘My Labour government will shatter the class ceiling so that every child regardless of their background has access to the best opportunities in life.’
Keir Starmer (Leader of the Labour Party)
No-one would disagree with the above two quotes. They are laudable aims. The problem is the implication that it is education which will have to do all the heavy lifting, rather than tackling poverty itself which is the main barrier to achievement. Politicians like to highlight exceptions but the EPI, the Sutton Trust, the IFS have all authored reports showing that educational attainment is inextricably linked to wealth and that the ‘attainment gap’ between ‘disadvantaged’ and other children has not narrowed over the past 15 years. There were 120, 710 children in temporary accommodation in June 2022 and probably more now. Addressing this would certainly contribute to better educational attainment for these children, as would ensuring the benefit system leaves no child in poverty. Our manifesto puts forward proposals as to how schools could form part of an anti-poverty strategy. The education system though cannot be expected to compensate massively for the failings of our economy to ensure everyone has a decent house and enough money to feed themselves and their children well. Professor Stephen Gorard’s research shows that extra resources should be targeted on children whose families have been receiving free school meals more or less permanently as those temporarily falling in to the FSM bracket make up most of the disadvantaged cohort who do better. He also recommends ending different types of schools which encourage hierarchies within the service i.e. market winners and losers. The poorest, he shows do better in schools with a range of social classes. No-one as yet is taking up these ideas.
Max Morris, the now deceased stalwart comprehensive campaigner, communist, head teacher and union president wrote the following quoted in ‘Campaigning For Socialism’ Memoirs by Margaret Morris (see last blog for the review)
‘(Schools) ‘ are neither the hope of humanity for a new world nor the ball and chain of the prevailing social system…..This is a basic truth. The process of change initiated by education is inevitably slow. Fundamental social change must come from deeper social forces …. In fact Lib-Lab social engineers, unconsciously perhaps, find in claims for education an alibi for not supporting the real forces that can change society. It’s all so nice and easy to imagine revolution through education. But it is armchair politics, parlour socialism.’
The following two articles explore the nature of child poverty and how education on its own cannot lift children out of it and that in some cases the current system might do the opposite of what is intended and marginalise people further.
Child Poverty and Education 1
Amanda Bentham, Pat Quigley and Ian Duckett (SEA NEC) examine the nature of child poverty, its impact on education attainment and campaigns to address it
The pandemic opened people’s eyes to the vast disparities in wealth and health in our society. Since then, the cost-of-living crisis with its high and rising inflation, particularly in relation to food and fuel, has sharpened public awareness of the extent and causes of poverty across the country.
From the red wall of the north to the heart of the capital’s prosperous and deprived areas inner city boroughs alike to the scudding skies of East Anglia and points south and west poorer pupils will not be receiving free meals. In July 2020, it took a footballer, Marcus Rashford, to shame the then prime minister, Boris Johnson, into a humiliating U-turn, which delivered free meals throughout that year’s long summer holidays. Hungry children aren’t so lucky now with seemingly no-one standing up for them. Even neophyte Labour MP, Keir Mather, upon winning back part of the red wall (Selby and Ainsty), used his first public utterance to back Sir Keir Starmer’s failure to oppose the cruel Tory two child benefit cap that will keep 200,000 children in the poverty trap.
The National Education Union (NEU) has been at the forefront of pushing for change with its No Child Left Behind campaign which joined forces with The Mirror newspaper and Child Poverty Action group at the 2022 Labour Party Conference to launch the Free school meals for all campaign. It was this initiative that prompted the Socialist Education Association to move an emergency motion on free school meals at the Conference last year which had unanimous support from the floor. Although nearly a quarter of children are eligible for free school meals,10 % do not claim due to bureaucracy and stigma and half of all children living in poverty are not entitled to free school meals because of restrictive eligibility criteria.
It’s no surprise that the NEU has taken a lead, teachers are workers who know first-hand the impact that poverty has on children in their classes, affecting progress, attainment, and educational outcomes. Children who are hungry or have not slept well because of overcrowded living conditions or who suffer ill health and frequent absence because of unhealthy homes plagued with damp and mould are unlikely to be able to take advantage of educational opportunities. In a recent National Education Union survey, over 8 in 10 respondents said their students demonstrated fatigue (87%) and an inability to concentrate (81%) both the result of poverty. In addition, almost 75% were unable to complete homework and more than half reported their students had experienced hunger (57%) or ill health (55%).
The scale of the problem in the UK is huge and every state school now has experience of dealing with child poverty. In March, this year 800,000 children lived in households that needed food from a foodbank in the previous 12 months: some of these emergency food services are based in schools. School staff in many areas battle the effects of poverty on a daily basis, in some cases feeding and clothing children but also signposting help and practical support whilst providing ongoing emotional support to them and their families. This can take its toll on everyone in terms of resilience, optimism, and hope for the future.
Overall, in UK, 29% of children or 4.2 million are living in poverty. This figure masks substantial local and regional variations and the fact that some groups of children are more affected than others. London has the highest child poverty rate in the country at 30% with notable differences between boroughs in the capital. Tower Hamlets has nearly half of all its children growing up in poverty. Studies show children with disabilities and those from minority ethnic backgrounds are disproportionately affected. 40% of disabled children and 48% of children from black and minority ethnic groups live in poverty. 44% of children living in lone-parent families experience poverty. Nor is parental employment a guaranteed route out of poverty. Low pay and insecure work are factors contributing to over 70% of children living below the poverty line in families where at least one parent works.
The effects on children of growing up in a materially disadvantaged household are well documented and are both short and long term. The National Child Development Study followed the progress from birth to maturity of all children in England, Scotland and Wales who were born in the week 3rd to 9th March 1958. The first longitudinal study of its kind, it clearly demonstrated the way that childhood adversities significantly influence life chances including pregnancy, education, health, and employment. It evidenced how inequalities are transmitted across generations and how health inequalities in middle age can be traced to childhood circumstances.
Poverty blights children’s lives and limits their attainment. Although education is key to building a better, more just and equal society, it cannot, and should not, be held responsible for lifting children out of poverty. As Diane Reay states in her book Miseducation (2017), “.schools reflect the wider society’s attitudes and values and, crucially, its distribution of resources, rather than being able to compensate for them.”
Child poverty is neither intractable nor inevitable, it is instead the result of political choices. Ending it requires a comprehensive, well-funded strategy. When reducing child poverty was prioritised by government between 1998 and 2003, the number of children in poverty fell by 60,000. How likely we are to witness a similar fall in the near future will depend on political agendas. Labour is predicted to form the next government. The General Election could be as early as next year. The leadership’s disappointing refusal to commit to universal free school meals or end punitive welfare reforms and austerity, reduces hope that tackling the stark life chances inequalities faced by thousands of UK children is going to happen any time soon. This should not deter us. We must continue to campaign as the SEA, the NEU, the TUC and more widely for a government that recognises every penny spent on giving children the best start in life as a positive action, an investment in them and their lives, but also in the future of their communities and indeed that of the entire country.
Child Poverty and Education 2 . ‘Tracksuits, Traumas and Class Traitors’ by D. Hunter
James Whiting (SEA General Secretary) describes a meeting with a parent which appeared to illustrate the gulf between the education service and some of the people it is supposed to serve. His perspective on the meeting was informed by D. Hunter’s book which both records and analyses the experience of interacting with state agencies by the poor and working class.
She came into the meeting room and slouched on the chair the other side of the table from me. An unmistakeable whiff of weed floated in the air. Dressed in a grey tracksuit, her hair in random dreadlocks and tattoos scrawled over her neck, she grinned at me across the table, her eyes fixed. It was the kind of ‘what are you going to do about?’ grin I have seen many times from kids in school- a compound of arrogance and untouchability which is a cover for deep vulnerability.
We were supposed to discuss a response to a complaint she had made about the school’s alleged failure to communicate, an unfair barring from the premises and the school not meeting the needs of her twin nursery age children, both of whom have challenging special needs. The boy has been diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum by the health service. He has very limited language capability and aged 4 he is not toilet trained. His sister is bright and is already reading. She loves books and displays serious social and emotional problems. She walks on tables when children are eating, spits on their food and their work, urinates on equipment and on occasion goes for a full-on trashing of the nursery. My meeting with their mother took place when her daughter had just returned from an exclusion from the nursery after just such an incident. Hardly a positive context.
Briefly, her complaint of lack of communication was not substantiated due to the number of meetings she had already attended with the head, her barring was lifted on condition she refrained from aggressive behaviour towards office staff, and we accepted that because of lack of extra support we could not meet the needs of her children. The school has put together support plans for both children based on the paediatric reports. In spite of the medical diagnoses there are no funds for extra support below statutory school age and the awarding of ECHP funding will take at least 20 weeks from their start in statutory age education. Changing the boy requires two members of staff which leaves one to manage the other 25 nursery age children whilst this goes on. Managing her daughter needs an extra member of staff too. The LA is trying to identify some minimal funding for when they start in reception.
My approach was to avoid being judgemental and try to persuade her to work with the school for the benefit of her children. The school has a good record of inclusion and has previously built strong positive relationships with parents of children experiencing difficulties. The meeting was mostly acrimonious. She started by saying that both OFSTED and the local MP would sort us out as we were breaking the Equalities Act. She had written to them both. She would not accept she had been abusive to staff or needed to change her approach. She then went on to demand proof of her daughter’s misdemeanours. ‘You need to show me a video’. Her theory was the school was concocting the whole story because she had complained. She already had a back-up in case the video, which we were not going to take, showed her daughter wrecking things. This was blaming a particular teacher who she alleged was responsible for causing her daughter’s tantrums. I tried to explain that unless she could trust the school and work with us on common strategies, her children would be the ones who would miss out.
Another governor who was with me then asked about the parent’s own school experience. This changed the mood and she became wistful and even tearful. She had found the whole thing a battle, she had been excluded, and she felt discriminated against. I asked which school and it happened to be a school I knew well in West London. I told her I had visited and worked at another school nearby. She calmed down and I was able to say that my role in responding to the complaint was over and now she should meet with the head to work out how we could all work to support her children. She agreed.
However, sadly this was not the end of the matter. She subsequently told the head that I was a well-known west London racist and that she had recorded the whole interview. She would use it as evidence. I had said nothing untoward though I had expressed dismay at one point and what she intends to use the ‘evidence’ for is any body’s guess. In reality, no-one will listen, the system is not on her side even though she likes to imagine that somewhere, someone is and that somehow justice as she sees it, will prevail.
Her mental health and drug addiction problems will not be tackled. She is incapable because of her experiences, of seeing the agencies of the state she has immediate contact with, as anything other than racist and discriminatory. (She was positive about her interactions with the NHS and its paediatric services. How far this was a ‘divide and rule’ tactic, it is hard to say.) No doubt she will be battling social services, the police, as well as schools, in the future. She will end up on the losing side.
Let’s analyse my role in this. I am ‘Chair of Governors’. The head occasionally likes to use me as back up with challenging parents and on previous occasions I have been able to act as a useful arbiter. For this woman though I was just another authority figure to fight. After all I am white, male and middle class representing the forces of oppression which she had experienced in her life.
At this point I want to reference the book entitled ‘Tracksuits, Traumas and Class Traitors’ by D. Hunter. It is rare to hear the voice of poor working-class people living on the margins of society. Suffering from appalling abuse as a child and drug addiction he goes on to experience the care system and imprisonment in what he calls a ‘carceral’ society. For him, what to most people are public services, become agencies of oppression and social control. Education, social services and even the health service are part of the oppressive apparatus belonging to what he calls ‘white supremacist patriarchal capitalism’ This is similar to Althusser‘s analysis ("Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Towards an Investigation)" where alongside Repressive and often violent apparatus of the state which would include the police, prisons etc are looser structures, ideological state apparatus (ISAs) that promote state ideology such as schools, religion etc. D. Hunter would classify some of the actions of these institutions as violent too. I would like to thank D. Hunter for giving me a more empathetic perspective on my interview. This was a parent cornered by the very forces he describes.
D. Hunter proposes, as an anarchist, community-based action to tackle the issues this parent is facing and would go down the ‘deschooling’ route no doubt. The disturbed behaviour of the girl twin is learnt and for educationalists signals trauma in her home life. Suspicion of child abuse, under safeguarding policies, will inevitably lead to the involvement of socials services and potential consequences. For us socialists this leaves us with a problem. From our perspective the capitalists are doing everything they can to nobble public services through underfunding ‘shrinking the state’ and privatisation. Our project is to defend the very services D. Hunter and my parent see as oppressive apparatus limiting their freedom and autonomy.
However, Althusser accepts that within ISAs class struggle takes place, to take control of positions in the ISA or to utilize its inherent contradictions. Starved of funds and subject to hegemonic right-wing ideology, it’s becoming increasingly hard to shape the education service as set out in our manifesto or even to tweak it. However, in our struggle for resources for education we must not forget the service must be enabling, inclusive, caring and above all humane. Unions within the service and campaigning groups outside of the service must work to achieve this.
You can buy D. Hunter’s book here