This HEPI blog was kindly authored by Dr Omar Khan, CEO at TASO, Transforming Access and Student Outcomes in Higher Education. The author is also the Chair of the Board of Trustees of Trust of London.
In response to the increasing and persistently high levels of child poverty, the newly elected Labour government has established a child poverty taskforce. Due to tight government finances, the government has opted not to immediately drop the two-child benefit cap, a significant factor contributing to child poverty. Regardless of the taskforce’s recommendations, higher education policymakers and institutions should consider the effects of child poverty on our sector and to explore potential actions we can take to address it.
There are three ways that child poverty matters for universities and colleges. Before outlining these, it is crucial to recognise that the most immediate and severe impact of child poverty is on the children themselves. Currently, 30% of children live in poverty, meaning they don’t have enough calories in their stomachs, or enough clothes to keep warm, directly impacting their physical and mental health. This situation of course affects parents and guardians, who are themselves living in poverty and have less financial and emotional resources; they also have less time to focus on their children’s long-term aspirations as they struggle to meet basic needs like food and heating. This explains why the key driver of child poverty is adult poverty, and also indicates the long-term or ‘scarring’ effects of child poverty.
Impact on current students
First, universities and colleges need to address child poverty by acknowledging its impact on current students. For those who grew up in households experiencing poverty, this will have affected their prior educational experience, but it also has wider effects in terms of their social networks and their need to support their parents and family, who may still be living in poverty.
Furthermore, as the current cost of living crisis has shown, students are now facing the prospect of having to work throughout their higher education experience, as maintenance loans and grants fall short of students’ outgoings, particularly housing and food. While the crisis affects many students, it is more likely to impact – and to impact more severely – those whose families cannot support them. For these students, the question is how much further below the poverty line they and their families fall, rather than whether they can rise above it.
Impact on future students
Second, higher education providers should consider child poverty through its impact on future students. A recent Education Policy Institute (EPI) report showed that the gap in school attainment between the poorest and richest children in England is widening.
This matters for higher education because there remains a substantial participation gap between students eligible for free school meals (FSM) and those who are not. Although FSM student participation rates have doubled over the last 15 years, reaching 29.2%, the gap between FSM and non-FSM students has slightly increased, now standing at 20.2 percentage points.
The primary driver of lower participation rates among children living in poverty is their lower attainment in school. Universities and colleges should be alarmed that the increase in school outcomes found by EPI suggests that the higher education participation gap could widen further in years to come, exacerbating inequalities for those already with the least opportunities.
Inequalities in higher education participation rates don’t just affect people today, but also directly affect outcomes in the future. A recent TASO report found some good news: that all post-school qualifications increase the earnings of FSM students, looking at their outcomes nine and 16 years after they sit their GCSEs. We should therefore be encouraging more FSM pupils to go on to earn post-schooling qualifications.
The data also showed some less good news: regardless of the qualification earned, FSM students earn less than their non-FSM counterparts in the labour market.
This shows that universities and colleges can do more to improve employability, particularly for more disadvantaged students, that is, those with experience of child poverty.
However, digging into the data, it’s clear that the prime driver of unequal labour market returns is prior attainment in school, as this chart shows.
Once this is controlled for, FSM graduates actually earn the same as their non-FSM counterparts. There is a catch. Only a very small proportion of FSM students had high prior attainment.
In the dataset we looked at, only 2% of FSM pupils were high attainers in school, compared to 13.5% of non-FSM pupils; or, non-FSM pupils were nearly seven times more likely to be high attainers than FSM pupils. To widen access and participation, higher education providers will need to take into account the impact of child poverty on attainment, or accept these gaps will persist for decades to come.
Higher education as an employer
Third, and perhaps less obvious, the higher education sector impacts on child poverty as an employer. About 62% of children in poverty live in households where at least one adult is working, effectively because their pay and conditions are inadequate to deliver an income that meets their (and their children’s) costs. Universities and colleges should seek to sign up to the Living Wage as a first step in ensuring their employees and their children aren’t living in poverty.
The Living Wage Foundation estimates that around 46% of UK universities (excluding international universities with UK campuses) are signed up, indicating room for improvement, even if this compares favourably to other public bodies such as local authorities (28%) and NHS Trusts and Boards (17%).
Trust for London, looking at London data only, has further found that a large proportion (43%) of people living in households where one or more adults work part-time (but none work full-time) are living in poverty. This highlights how pay and conditions extend beyond the hourly wages employees are paid. Universities and colleges should consider how their employment practices can best ensure that the children of those they employ don’t end up living in poverty.
Five actions for the sector
Higher education should reflect on the impact of child poverty on the sector, but also how we best respond to it. Here are five actions the sector could take in response to child poverty, whatever the findings and recommendations of the government’s child poverty taskforce:
- Increase maintenance grants and loans for students, particularly students with an experience of poverty.
- Bursaries or other reductions in costs for students, particularly housing, food and utilities costs, and targeted at those who grew up in poverty (that is, FSM).
- Explain and expand contextualised admissions on grounds of FSM status (that is, experience of child poverty). Given the already low attainment of FSM pupils, but also evidence of widening gaps for five and 11-year-old children in the last year, we cannot afford to wait till after those children reach the age of 18 in 2037 in the hope that policymakers will have by then addressed this longstanding and persistent attainment gap.
- Universities and colleges should improve their employment support to FSM children, in particular, working with employers where possible.
- Universities and colleges should seek to sign up to the Living Wage, but should also look at whether or not their wider terms and conditions could better address child poverty.