Read time: 4 mins
Based on More for Children Issues Paper 4: Education, by Megan Lang, Sharon Bessell and Cadhla O’Sullivan.
According to ANU experts, schools in deprived communities provide food, community, and safety so children can focus. Hunger makes learning hard, especially in places with few non-school learning opportunities. The findings show that poverty and education are linked. Providing children more public learning experiences could help.
Read time: 4 mins
Based on More for Children Issues Paper 4: Education, by Megan Lang, Sharon Bessell and Cadhla O’Sullivan.
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More for Children research has found that to help students learn, some staff personally prepare food for students. Children also told experts about struggling to learn while hungry.
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Time spent meeting children’s basic needs is affecting education. Especially when outside of school, children have few opportunities to learn.
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Cost-of-living relief would likely benefit education. Children need accessible and affordable learning experiences, inside and outside of school.
ANU experts have found that it’s falling on schools to deliver basic social services to children.
The findings – gathered using a rights-based methodology specially designed for child poverty research – reflect what teachers know too well. Child poverty and learning just do not mix.
Children’s own testimonies confirm this. They describe being unable to focus, or attend school at all, while hungry, tired and anxious. They link their ability to learn explicitly to the cost of food.
“I’m sending a message to the government, to lower the price of the food and put a lot more effort into the kids’ education so that they don’t have to struggle at school or at home,” one 12-year-old boy said.
These children recognise the value of education. While they describe serious problems, many still see school as a path to prosperity.
One 9-year-old said “we need to learn [at school] to get a better job. It means you get better pay, and you have a better job. You can get more things you need like food and water and electricity and warmth.”
This is why staff are filling the gap. At one school, a principal personally made and served students food.
Another child said, “With [food prices] going up like this, it’s going up too much, and [my family] still have to pay.”
The children know this school-based support disappears in holidays. They also know not to expect that support in high school. This creates considerable anxiety.
This strains teaching. In places where child poverty is common, kids rarely get one-on-one support.
“I have dyslexia, so I struggle with reading and writing. There are schools that do one-on-one help, but I can’t get in because there’s people there that actually don’t need one on-one-help. But my school, they don’t do one-on-one help, they don’t even have enough teachers as it is,” 12-year-old ‘Max’ said.
Another symptom of the strain is poor relationships between kids and adults.
Finally, opportunities for informal learning are severely limited. Children say they don’t have the money or time for extra-curricular activities they liked. They mentioned sport, creative activities and family outings.
Schools can’t do it all, and they are now being tasked with preventing child poverty. The evidence shows that new policies for giving children chances to learn about the world – within the walls of schools and beyond them – are needed.
Top image: Shutterstock/Ahmad Nazrol Bin Mohammed.
“Children described being unable to focus, or attend school at all, while hungry, tired and anxious. They linked their ability to learn explicitly to the cost of food.”
