Lack of money can cut people's lives twenty years short, as we see in another image. And it also makes it much harder for them to do things that will improve their lives and their prospects for the future, as this image shows.

The green bar shows the percentage of pupils in England eligible for free school meals who a pass grade in GCSE English and Maths. The figure is 43%. For all other pupils the figure is 72%, as shown in the yellow bar. The difference, known as the “attainment gap,” is shown in the blue section next to the green. This has changed very little over recent years. The other blue sections show the 28% of all pupils, (in addition to the attainment gap), who fail to reach this basic standard. That's 35% of pupils in all. The data is from 2022-23.

Eligibility for free school meals, which is tightly controlled in England, is a reliable measure of child poverty. Nearly a quarter of pupils are eligible, and a quarter of all children are identified by the government as living in absolute poverty. That’s over two million children in both cases.

Research suggests that education is one of the most important predictors of a young person’s life chances. It affects, on average, not only their future income and paid work prospects, but also their physical and mental health, their chances of a criminal conviction and the quality of their lives in broader terms. This effect rolls forward through the generations, as better off families continue to prosper while the effects of deprivation are equally engrained.

Why is this? Why should a shortage of money affect educational outcomes, given that the education itself is provided without payment and a child’s natural abilities are not income-dependent?

The answer lies back in all the different things people do with their time. A child’s school learning doesn’t take place in a vacuum. It is part of a connected package of life activities including eating, sleeping, socialising and playing. These elements all work together in child development. School learning is bound to suffer if other aspects of a child’s life are compromised by a shortage of money.

This is the reality for a quarter of all children. Money is not an abstract concept to be spoken of in averages, or percentages, or fractions, because what matters to an individual child is the availability of enough actual money in their actual family. Only this actual money can ensure that they are properly housed, fed, clothed, equipped and supplied with sufficient opportunities to socialise with adults and other children, the basic human needs on which a good education is grounded.

How to ensure that enough money reaches every family? It is a question that too easily gets lost among the percentages and fractions and averages. Are we to be grateful that three quarters of children do not live in absolute poverty when a quarter do? Or that 43% of the poorest children achieve a basic qualification in English and maths when 57% do not? Or, even, that 65% of all children achieve that basic qualification when 35% do not? Can a system that fails 35% of all children really be considered a policy success?

Cut through the statistics, and the fact remains that each individual child who goes to school hungry is a failure of social and economic policy in a rich country like the UK. That’s millions of policy failures every day, at which point it is fair to wonder whether the people who enact these policies have any idea what they are doing. How can the UK be so rich on paper, and so poor in practice? A lot of the answer has to do with what we are spending our money on.

Data sources:

Educational outcomes is taken from this table on the UK government website. Data on food poverty comes from this House of Commons research paper. Other sources referred to are here and here.