SCHOOL students challenged MPs last week to see poverty through their eyes and understand its effect on life at school, home, and in the community. Every young person should have an equal opportunity to do well and not just to survive, they told them. “It’s about having the right conditions to thrive, free from the additional burdens of poverty.”
The Year 11 students, aged 15 to 16, from Oasis Academy Lord’s Hill, in Southampton, went to Westminster on Tuesday of last week for the launch of a new report, A Chance at Childhood. Published jointly by the Children’s Society and Oasis UK in expectation of the Government’s Child Poverty Strategy, it highlights their first-hand reflections.
They told MPs, “We stand before you today not just as students, but as witnesses to the silent struggles of young people in our community trapped in poverty. Poverty is an economic issue. It is a cycle that suffocates ambition, crushes potential, and makes even the simplest aspects of home life unbearable.”
When you are young, they said, you shouldn’t have to worry about “adult” things like money, bills, and getting food on the table. School should not be “yet another place” where inequality and the impact of poverty is deeply felt: “Not being able to afford school trips causes you to miss out and feel like an outsider. . . Living in poverty may mean you have unequal access to opportunities such as extracurricular activities.”
They reflected on the detrimental effects of living in overcrowded housing: lack of privacy; not being able to study; the pressure to take on additional caring responsibilities or employment. “Although our parents try to shield us away from seeing them struggle financially,” they said, “we notice their struggles, their pains, and we want to help them, share their burdens.”
Struggles with mental health and well-being, emotional neglect, increased tensions at home, and lack of safety in areas with higher crime rates are all touched on in the report. Young people always had something to say and something to teach that came from their everyday experiences, the CEO of the Children’s Society, Mark Russell, says in the foreword.
“We know from our research and our direct work with young people that there is a clear link between poverty and well-being. We see this in our Good Childhood Report year after year. We all need to hear these insights and commit ourselves to fight for the change we need.”