No coats, no food – schoolchildren have time-travelled to Victorian Britain

The data reads like something from the Great Depression. Or perhaps a Dickens novel.

But it’s not. The research published this past week by the Sutton Trust, which I chair, is a snapshot of life in schools in 21st century Britain, and it is one that should shame us all.

It paints a picture of how the cost of living crisis is rampaging through the whole of society – but specifically the poorest parts, resulting in children turning up to school hungry, cold and unable to concentrate. Specifically, it outlines how rocketing inflation is holding back the most deprived kids in our country and reversing years of fragile progress in social mobility.

Let me give you some of the most striking statistics from the survey. Be warned that some of them are truly horrifying – and doubly so when one considers that we live in one of the richest countries in the world.

Teachers are seeing growing numbers of children coming to school hungry (38 per cent of teachers) and without basic warm clothing such as a coat (an eye-watering 54 per cent).

Some 38 per cent of teachers say at least a third of their pupils are facing financial pressures that are affecting their ability to succeed in school, but this increases to 72 per cent of teachers in the most deprived schools.

It gets worse. Some 52 per cent of heads and senior leaders say the number of pupils technically ineligible for free school meals, yet still unable to afford a simple lunch, has increased substantially. There are many, many more statistics like this. It’s a horrifying state of affairs.

So what can be done? So much of the answer, of course, lies with the government.

Most obviously, ministers must urgently rethink their pig-headed refusal last month to increase the qualification threshold for free school meals. They must be made to understand that more and more children are arriving at school hungry and without the means to buy food at lunchtime.

It is worth remembering that for many of these young people, the food served up in the school canteen is the only hot meal they will get that day. It hardly needs repeating of course, but hungry children are not learning children.

As a matter of urgency, money needs to be found to pay for the provision of free school meals much more widely. But in addition, plenty needs to be done to support the poorest kids in our schools. It’s easy to forget that the children most appallingly affected by the cost of the living crisis are the very same ones who felt the brunt of learning loss during the Covid-19 pandemic.

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It is these young people who were so badly let down when Boris Johnson’s government decided to U-turn on its plans to fully fund a programme to help them catch up on what they missed during lockdown.

It is also these children’s families who are staring in horror and fear at rocketing fuel bills and inflationary food costs, while the support offered to them by local authorities has been eroded by years of funding cuts.

In short, these families are being left high and dry – and their children are the victims. Countless young people will no longer achieve their potential, their education will be cut short and they will no longer become the drivers of tomorrow’s economy. In every sense, then, their tragedy is the whole country’s tragedy, and drastic intervention is necessary right now.

Sir Peter Lampl is the chair and founder of the Sutton Trust