A school executive principal says an increasing number of students are going hungry at home as parents are forced to choose between heating their homes or feeding their children. Sally Brooks, executive principal at Fulham Cross Academy, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service she has seen a rise in the number of families using food banks.
She says some children are surviving on as little as one slice of bread a day and students are coming to school on empty stomachs. Ms Brooks added that the number of families using the school's foodbank had risen from 25 to 45 in the year to December 2021.
"The high level of deprivation has been impacted by Brexit and the pandemic,” she told My London. “Lots of families have found themselves without work or have had jobs kind of curtailed and the money going into the household hasn’t been enough."
Fulham Cross Academy offer a free school lunch to every student regardless of their family's income, thanks to a scheme launched in January 2020 with Hammersmith and Fulham Council. While the free meals help students form a proper diet, Ms Brooks said some students are struggling to concentrate on lessons because they are arriving at school hungry, with one boy coming to school an hour late for over a week and struggling to stay awake before teachers found out he was not eating at home.
She added: "There just wasn’t any food at home, Mum had had to use the money to make sure that the house had electricity. For younger siblings they prioritised feeding them. They were basically surviving on a slice of bread and something they could put on it.
"He was not able to get up in the morning. We have now been able get him into the breakfast club. We have had a father come in asking for sanitary products for teenage girls and that takes a lot of guts to do.
"We see the school as an extension of the family. I think every child in London should have access to a free school meal so we know our children are nourished enough to learn."
Ms Brooks said child hunger is a UK-wide problem and she fears more families will struggle to feed themselves due to the rising cost of living. She added: "I’m really concerned about what’s going to happen in the next six months, particularly around rising energy costs and rising food bills. That could be like a silent pandemic if we aren’t really conscious of it and taking proactive steps to prevent that happening.
"For some, the meal that they get in school at lunch time is the only meal that they have. It obviously impacts on ability to learn. If you’re not eating it’s really hard to sustain concentration in education. We have always had a group of children who we notice are not eating enough."
For more stories from where you live, visit InYourArea.
