Parents pay at least £1,000 a year to send a child to state primary school in the UK and nearly £2,300 to secondary school – a jump in costs of 16% and 30% respectively since 2022, far outstripping both inflation (8%) and earnings growth (12%) during the same period, new research from Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) and the Centre for Research in Social Policy (CRSP) finds.
The proportion of tax credit claimants not moving to universal credit (UC) when required to – and losing all of their benefits as a result – has jumped to 39%, up from 25% in July, DWP figures published today show. That’s more than 180,000 people whose ‘legacy benefit’ claim has been terminated without safely making the move to UC.
Court of Appeal upholds decision that universal credit payments can be backdated on revision, but claimants risk still being thwarted by DWP IT design flaws and those subject to managed migration face ‘double whammy’ loss of transitional protections and backdated payments.
Parents typically need to find at least £39 per week for a child’s secondary school education and £19 for a primary-aged child, research for Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) finds.
1 in 3 school-age children in England living in poverty (800,000) miss out on free school meals despite cost of living struggles of families. The main causes are restrictive eligibility criteria and lack of universal provision.
