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The National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT) and the National Union of Teachers (NUT), the two largest EI’s national affiliates, have criticised the UK coalition Governments’ consultation on child poverty.

NUT: insufficient funding allocated to the fight against poverty

“Addressing the number of children in poverty in the UK should be a key Government priority,” NUT General Secretary Christine Blower said.“There is no defence for the number of children in the UK who go to bed hungry and wake up cold.”

Investing in early years’ education and children’s centres is a wise spending choice but children will only reap the benefit if services are sustainable and early years’ professionals are well paid and properly trained, she added.

Blower also denounced the fact that by 2015, the available budget from which local authorities provide children’s centres will have fallen by three per cent since 2010.

“To claim teaching ‘quality’ will be improved by introducing performance-related pay is nonsense,” she underlined. “There is no evidence that linking pay to performance increases results in schools. There is evidence, however, that driving schools to compete will let down the most vulnerable learners.”

Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith pledged to raise qualification requirements for teachers, she said. However, this is at odds with the current Government policy allowing free schools and academies to employ non-qualified teachers and promising new ‘early years teachers’ who are not teachers.

Blower also strongly highlighted the fact that bringing down the barriers to learning for children in poverty matters to teachers:  “Teachers are professionals with high expectations for every child in their class. They want to widen their horizons and reduce structural inequalities in society.”

The NUT will use the consultation on the new strategy to bring to the table teacher expertise about what education policies are the right and wrong ones for closing the gap. Reducing the existence of child poverty is a target by which the Government must be measured and judged, Blower said.

NASUWT: Government must reassess its programme of economic and social reforms

THE NASUWT is also concerned about the numbers affected by child poverty. “According to the Child Poverty Action Group, more than one in four children are living in poverty in the UK today,” said NASUWT General Secretary Chris Keates. “The charity has warned that Coalition Government policies are predicted to result in an estimated 600,000 more children living in poverty by 2015/16. The figures are rising year on year.”

She went on to criticise the Government for choosing to dress it up, as its social and economic policies are driving up child poverty. A few giveaways around food vouchers and small reductions in utility bills will not address the scandal of child poverty in the UK, she warned.

“Refining how child poverty is measured will not do anything to help improve the life chances of the poorest children and young people and cynics might say this latest announcement is simply an attempt to distract and conceal the extent of the problem,” Keates went on to say. “The fact is that the only answer is for the Coalition to reassess its programme of economic and social reforms which are wreaking misery and hardship on increasing numbers of children and young people.”

EI: fighting poverty through quality education for all

Poverty derails international commitments to end child poverty and guarantee education for all, said EI General Secretary Fred van Leeuwen. “EI and its affiliates firmly believe that free, universal quality public education provides equal education opportunities for all, is a crucial underpinning of democracy in societies, and is a key factor enabling individuals and communities to break out of cycles of poverty,” he said. Van Leeuwen went on to say that the trade union movement must continue to mobilise its forces to help achieve the Millennium Goal to eradicate poverty.