Food insecurity: 3 million children are at risk of going without food during the school summer holidays

For many children, looking ahead to the school holidays brings joy and excitement - for others, the six weeks away can bring significant hardship.

Transcript

00:00As a head teacher, what changes do you observe in students' well-being when they return from

00:05school holidays, especially from those families who are struggling financially? Does it impact

00:09their academic performance and their behaviour?

00:12I think it does, actually. You know, you've got those families who are able to put their

00:17children into holiday clubs where they've got that social interaction, their well-being

00:24is being supported, you know, that they're able to interact. But, you know, with those

00:30families that can't afford that, then generally there isn't that great social interaction.

00:39You know, there's potentially the likelihood that nutritionally they're not eating, you

00:44know, a nice, balanced, nutritious meal every day. So when we get children back in summer,

00:51there's some work we've got to do with children to get them back into the idea of playing

00:58with other children, being able to sit and concentrate in terms of lessons. And sometimes

01:06for some children, that takes a little bit longer to kind of embed after a six-week holiday.

01:12That SATS results were coming through and they were looking at whether they'd come back

01:17to the pre-pandemic levels. And I think they're making headway there, but not quite reaching

01:22pre-pandemic levels. Is that something, a similar trend that you're seeing behaviourally

01:27as well, that things are coming back to normal, but maybe they're not quite there?

01:31Yeah, I think so. I think there's a huge hangover from COVID that will take a long time to work

01:39through the system, I think. I think learning was going on during COVID, but having that

01:44teacher there with all the resources that they're at disposal to actually support children's

01:49learning, that wasn't always there. So there's inevitably going to be those gaps in learning,

01:55which I think all schools have seen across the board.