School is never 'free': Help with hidden costs of schooling could lift millions of families out of poverty

24 March 2025, 07:12

Parents are really struggling with the cost of school. That’s the message from a major new poll of parents living below the breadline.

Parentkind works with almost 24,000 parent groups and schools and I am constantly reminded by the parents we work with that school is not free. One in five of all parents are struggling with school costs.

This isn’t just over-priced blazers or trainers for PE lessons, parents face an almost endless list of added costs, from technology, school trips and even “voluntary” contributions to the school fund.

It’s hard to underestimate how stressful poverty is for parents and how widespread poverty is, with recent data suggesting almost a third of children now live in poverty. There are almost always poor parents behind these numbers.

Parents living in poverty spend about £2,000 a year on sending their children to schools that are meant to be free. That’s an incredibly hard ask of parents who are struggling to put food on their tables and heat in their homes. Finding the money for extra school costs is a hard ask for relatively well-paid parents, but it becomes a serious stress for the poorest parents.

This isn’t just about school uniforms. Many of these parents are having to stump up an average of £486 a year on school lunches, £110 on school trips and even £41 towards general school funds. This all adds up to a major ongoing problem for millions of parents living in the worst poverty.

When you read the papers or listen to LBC, the debate around poverty will often focus on big changes to the welfare system, but for parents who have the least spare change, tackling the cost of sending their children to school could make just as much difference as changes to benefits they receive.

Too many parents are suffering from such awful poverty that our evidence suggests 250,000 children go to school hungry every day, with more than 400,000 going to school in dirty clothes because their parents can’t afford to wash their school uniforms. When we talk about poverty this is the miserable reality for many parents and their children.

The Government has promised an “ambitious” new plan to reduce child poverty before the summer. Behind every poor child will be a struggling parent. We can’t forget these parents when this plan is published later this year.

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Jason Elsom is Chief Executive of Parentkind.

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