Schools have become “an unofficial fourth emergency service” for vulnerable families across England and Wales, offering food parcels, clothing and laundry facilities to those worst affected by austerity, according to a new report by a headteachers’ union.
A majority of the 400 school leaders surveyed by the Association of Schools and College Leaders (ASCL) said they were seeing a “rising tide” of poverty among their pupils, at a time when they were having to cut their own budgets and receiving less support from local councils.
Sarah Bone, headteacher of Headlands school, a comprehensive in Yorkshire’s East Riding, said: “We have far too many children with no heating in the home, no food in the cupboards, washing themselves with cold water, walking to school with holes in their shoes and trousers that are ill-fitted and completely worn out, and living on one hot meal a day provided at school.”
https://www.theguardian.com/educatio...orest-families
I bet this is an exaggeration. Is it?