Staff at Tees Valley Education (TVE), which runs four primaries and a special school in some of the region’s most deprived areas, are used to looking for signs that families are under serious strain. One mother’s hands were “raw and red”, recalls Katrina Morley, its chief executive.
“She and her husband had five jobs between them,” Morley explains. “She was hand-washing the children’s uniforms regularly and they were turning up to school immaculate, but the detergent was eating away at her hands.”
Morley says “white goods poverty” – particularly families without working washing machines or cookers – is now an area of desperate unseen need. She says the trust tries to negotiate with council teams or connect families with charities who can help.
They have pastoral teams who build relationships with families, while staff are always on hand to talk at the school gates, and often the school will be the only trusted or available place for parents to turn for help. Morley adds that all their schools have washing machines and those that have showers are also used for pupils struggling to wash at home.
This trust educates some of the poorest communities in the country. On average, schools in England have nearly 24% of pupils on free school meals, but in these schools between 69% and 97% of pupils are eligible.
Sean Harris, who leads on improvement, research and innovation at TVE, and is an expert on poverty in schools, says it’s not as simple as saying quality teaching will fix everything: “If a child is hungry and not cared for it doesn’t matter whether you’re a bloody good teacher.”
He believes that in order to deliver “deep social justice”, schools have to do “deep social listening” to understand what their children are living through, without making assumptions. “That’s hard in education when you’re really busy,” he admits. Both he and Morley grew up in poverty, but the trust educates its teachers about what children are experiencing.
Alongside lack of food, lack of sleep has become a big issue. Morley says some children don’t have a bed, while others share a bed with siblings. Some can’t sleep because they don’t have enough bedding in an unheated property and they’re cold. Others can’t sleep because they are anxious.
The trust knows sleep deprivation, like hunger, is likely to impact a child’s ability to focus and retain information, and they work with regional charities to pull in help. This winter, as fuel prices soared, pastoral teams discreetly donated blankets.
Many kids are shouldering a lot. “Sometimes parents are trying to hold down three or four or five different jobs and the child might be taking younger siblings to school or putting food on the table,” Morley says.
The trust’s magazine for parents focuses on low-income activities and cooking on a budget. They have drop-in coffee mornings and give parents free breakfasts, as a chance to open up dialogue about where they need help. “It’s about giving them some dignity,” Morley says. She adds: “These children deserve every chance every day.”
