Comprehensive spending review 2007
What it needs to deliver on child poverty

Make education truly free at the point of delivery

Education should be free at the point of delivery. Too often it is not. A Department for Education and Skills (DfES) survey published in 2004 investigated the costs associated with schooling, including trips and activities; contributions to school funds; meals; and travel.57 Overall, the researchers found that £736.22 was spent per child. Although the poorest households spent somewhat less in cash terms than the richest, this is actually a bigger share of their income. Moreover, the poorest households are those most likely to report difficulty in meeting these costs. The increasingly common use of private tuition by richer parents, along with poorer parents' difficulty in meeting educational costs, will inevitably widen the educational achievement gap between their children.

Spending levels are key for two reasons: first, spending may open up new opportunities for children (for example, trips and activities) and so if income precludes spending, affected children will be denied the experiences open to many of their peers. Second, parents make sacrifices themselves to give the maximum opportunities to their children, so spending on schooling may be at the expense of other necessary outgoings. For both reasons, CPAG would like to see action to ensure all children have equal access and to ease the burden on family budgets.

School meals

Though school meals are available to some (linked to receipt of other benefits) they are poorly taken up. All too often the existing system openly identifies those in receipt of free school meals, resulting in stigma and low take-up. A recent CPAG publication, Recipe for Change, profiled good practice in this area (for example, cashless systems using swipe cards), arguing for improved current practice on the route to universal free school meals. As the take-up of free school meals is low, the provision of universal free school meals would ensure full take-up and protect families who are relatively poor but not entitled to claim free school meals. In 2003/04 in the UK 16.5 per cent of children were entitled to free school meals,58 a figure that falls well short of the 28 per cent of children income poor in Great Britain the same year,59 demonstrating how restricted entitlement is.

School clothing

Clothing for school costs money, more for older children, and this need is focused around very specific transition points in their development - growth spurts and changes of school. School uniforms can have a protective effect if it means that no child stands out because parents have not been able to spend as much on their clothing as their peers. This is dependent, however, on adequate clothing grants to help to prevent childhood stigma. A recent report from Citizens Advice suggested that the costs of uniforms for the start of secondary school could amount to over £20060 and demonstrated an extremely patchy picture of local education authority (LEA) support for parents in meeting the cost. It showed that two out of five LEAs provided no help at all with school clothing, a situation that has worsened significantly since 2001.

Trips and activities

School activities, including trips and hobbies, are a vital element of childhood learning and experience, but charges often apply. Although official guidance discourages charging for activities occurring in school time, schools may ask for 'voluntary' contributions for certain activities, and can charge for activities associated with school which fall outside the school day. Charges or 'voluntary' contributions confront parents and children with an odious choice: preventing a child from participating in an activity, or paying for them to do so out of an already stretched budget. Both work against effective anti-poverty policy.

Extended schools

As the DfES acknowledges in its guidance to help schools plan and fund their extended schools,61 such schools offer particular benefits for the most disadvantaged children and young people, such as study support activities, after-school and holiday activities, childcare, parenting support and referral to wider support services. All schools are expected to offer some free study support and some free after-school sport activities but schools may (after local consultation) fund other study support activities by charging parents. While schools may use their delegated budget to fund access to study support activities for the children and young people in low-income families (and to support access to educational activities which are normally included as part of the childcare offer), this will undoubtedly differ from school to school. And, like free school meals, it runs the risk of openly identifying those children in low-income families, resulting in stigma and low take-up. Many will, therefore, be denied the educational benefits of these study support activities.

CPAG is concerned over the policy presumption in extended schools - notwithstanding the benefits they offer to the most disadvantaged children - that parents have less and less time to parent and children require more and more state care. We do not believe that this is what most parents want; instead they want a better work-life balance.

The way to resolve the problems that have a particular impact on children from poorer families is firstly to consider the appropriateness of costly trips or uniform (such as uniform badges or uniforms with only one supplier) and, where such services are necessary, either to provide adequate grants or to provide such services universally, free at the point of delivery with a test of educational need, not ability to pay.

Notes

57 T Brunwin, S Clemens, G Deakin and E Mortimer, The Costs of Schooling, Department for Education and Skills Research Report, 2004
58 Department for Education and Skills, Statistics of Education: education and training statistics for the United Kingdom, The Stationery Office, 2004, Table 2.10
59 See note 2
60 Citizens Advice, Help with Uniform Costs: update, p4: a previous study came to very similar results, see National Association of Citizen Advice Bureaux, Uniform Failure, CAB evidence report, 2001, p18
61 Department for Education and Skills, Planning and Funding Extended Schools: a guide for schools, local authorities and their partner organisations, The Stationery Office, 2006

Comprehensive spending review 2007
What it needs to deliver on child poverty

Contents page
Introduction
The Government’s record
What should the spending review deliver?
Provide most for those children at greatest risk of poverty
Work towards better jobs, not just more jobs
Ensure the safety net protects families against poverty
Maximise the contribution of child benefit within family support
Introduce free at the point of delivery good-quality childcare
Make the reduction of child poverty central to the new child support policies
Make education truly free at the point of delivery
Provide benefit entitlement to all UK residents equally, irrespective of immigration status
Reduce the disproportionate burden of taxation on poorer families
Improve the quality of delivery and gear it to the needs of the poorest families
Notes

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