The Effects of Poverty on School Education – Research from the Poverty and Education Network

According to recent statistics, 4.3 million children are living in poverty in the UK which amounts to 24% of all children. The statistic is much higher for children who belong to a black and minority ethnic group: 47% (Child Poverty Action Group, 2024). Living in poverty means that there is a constant struggle for the household resource to meet the needs of the members of the household, and children and young people can lack access to sufficient food, adequate heating and clothing and, at times, appropriate accommodation. The Poverty and Education Network was founded in 2014 and has a national and international perspective on the impact of poverty on school education for children and young people. The Network has forged effective working relationships with many of the University providers of Education (and other subject areas) and external bodies such as Scottish Government researchers and NGOs. In recent years, one of the main aims of the research conducted by members of the Poverty and Education Network has been to uncover ‘hidden poverty’. This refers to forms of poverty that affect children and young people that are not known, or less well-known. This work includes, for example, inequalities in access to music education in Scotland (Wilson et.al., 2020). Much of the research by members of the Network, has been presented in the two symposia that we, as a group, present at the annual SERA conference and in some shared publications (McKinney et. al., 2020; McKinney et al., 2023). In this short article we examine some of the research within three periods of time: pre-Covid-19; Covid-19 and post-Covid-19. We justify this on the grounds that the effects of Covid-19 (and world-wide economic crisis) has increased levels of poverty, and this has had a serious impact on many aspects of society and, most notably, school education.