CPAG in Scotland’s Early Warning System has been operating for ten years! Over Challenge Poverty Week we are looking back at some of the social security events in this period, key findings from the Early Warning System and how they have influenced policy and practise. Today we are looking back at universal credit and how Early Warning System evidence can influence its future.
Last week, the House of Commons’ Education Committee published a report on persistent absence and support for disadvantaged pupils. There is growing concern about rising levels of pupil absence following the pandemic. Attendance data highlights that children from lower-income households have lower attendance rates than their peers. Children eligible for free school meals are more than twice as likely as their peers to be persistently absent from school.
CPAG in Scotland’s Early Warning System has been operating for ten years! Over Challenge Poverty Week we are looking back at some of the social security events in this period, key findings from the Early Warning System and how they have influenced policy and practise.
CPAG in Scotland’s Early Warning System has been operating for ten years! Over Challenge Poverty Week we will look back at some of the social security events in this period, key findings from the Early Warning System and how they have influenced policy and practise. Looking ahead we will identify how Early Warning System evidence and analysis can inform the future shape of social security at UK, Scotland and local level.
Schools work really hard to provide enriching experiences for their pupils, from trips and clubs to leavers’ celebrations. However, parents and children have told us through our UK Cost of the School Day project that fun activities at school often have hidden and unrecognised costs. This can mean children from low-income families miss out.
The Scottish Government’s announcement this week of increased funding for discretionary housing payments (DHPs) to mitigate the benefit cap as fully as possible is hugely welcome. It is vital now that people affected by the benefit cap apply to their local authority as soon as possible and ask for a backdate to the beginning of this year.
The London Mayor’s announcement this week that all primary school pupils will get a free school meal for at least one year is a huge step forward. At CPAG we estimate that 210,000 children in poverty in London do not currently qualify for free school meals because the national income threshold for eligibility is shamefully low. The Mayor’s scheme will go a significant way towards addressing this problem by providing a daily hot meal to around 90,000 of those children – with the other 120,000 being children in poverty in secondary school.
A family’s ability to get universal credit is often based not on their actual circumstances, but on a fictional version of their circumstances. Welfare rights worker Carri Swann explains.
'Educational inequalities cannot be solved by the education system alone.’ The concluding words of the latest IFS Deaton Review report into inequalities in education came as absolutely no surprise to us here at CPAG, and no doubt to those working on the frontline within our education system either. Despite decades of initiatives, strategies and hard work being undertaken by schools, the disadvantage gap has been stubbornly persistent over the past 20 years. It’s yet more evidence that the work of our schools is being held back by the levels of poverty children are facing.