Mari Burton interview

Will Barber-Taylor: Hello, and welcome to the Centre Think Tank interview series, In Conversation. As always, I am your host, Will Barber-Taylor, and in this episode, I am delighted to be joined by Mari Burton, National Campaign Manager for the National Education Union. Welcome to the interview, Mari.

Mari Burton: Thank you. It is great to be here.

Will Barber-Taylor: It is wonderful to have you on. Now, the first question that I would like to ask is, can you tell me a bit about why the “No Child Left Behind” campaign was created?

Mari Burton: The No Child Left Behind campaign was created at the start of 2020. So it was just before the pandemic, but I think it was very aptly timed. And it was part of the then newly reformed National Education Union, because there had been two unions before that. It was part of our changing priorities. And it is a bit of a sad indictment, I think, of where we are really, because as a newly reformed union, we were looking at what we wanted to tackle on the ground. We were listening to what our members were saying. Child poverty was something that we have always been very aware of. It has always been in different job roles and aspects of what the union is focusing on. But we felt that we needed to make this a real priority because after years of austerity and a lot of policies that have led to the increase of poverty, our members who are working right on the front line of this, are seeing how badly this impacts children and young people, how badly this impacts families.

So the No Child Left Behind campaign was a response to that, and it was a way for us to push for the impact that poverty has on education in particular, because if you are a child and you are going to a state school, I think there is a bit of a misconception that school is free. And if you just work hard, then you will do great.

And if you just work hard, you will do great in your exams. You will go on, you will get a job, you will have a great, happy life. But the reality of that is not quite as simple because if you are coming to school and you are someone who is got a background where poverty looms very large, where finances are a big struggle, that has a much wider impact on the rest of your life and also how you actually can engage in education and what you can hope to get out of it.

And that means that we have a huge number of children who are not on a level playing field when they come to school. And we believe at the National Education Union that we have absolutely got to do our best for every child, and we do not want any of them to be left behind.

Will Barber-Taylor: Absolutely. And I think you have touched upon this slightly, but what impact does the lack of a free school meal have on a student’s education?

Mari Burton: So, very simply, children cannot learn if they are hungry, coming to school without proper nutrition, if they are not getting a meal that keeps them going for the rest of the day. They are just not going to do as well in school as they could. They are not going to enjoy themselves. They are not going to necessarily feel very comfortable or safe. And all of this has a big impact on how you can learn.

And I mean, just from a personal viewpoint, if I skip lunch, I know I am not doing brilliantly in the afternoon. I know I am not necessarily getting the best kind of work done. So, how can we then expect children and young people to come to school, have quite a long day, be encouraged to do quite a lot of intense thinking and cognitive work, if they are missing a meal? This is a big problem.

We know that in this country, poverty is on the rise. We know categorically that hundreds of thousands of students who really urgently need free school meals do not get them. And then we know that those are the children who are really missing out and who again are not doing so well.

So if you are a child and you are missing out on a free school meal, we know that this really impacts how you can engage with the day. So we frequently poll our members to find out about this. And in a NEU poll, it was found that 94% of teachers said that poverty directly affects the learning of pupils in their school. 87% of those teachers said that pupils were showing signs of tiredness and fatigue. 82% of teachers said they had students who could not concentrate.

I mean, to be honest, it is all quite obvious. That if you have a child who is not necessarily going to be able to have regular meals or healthy meals elsewhere, then school is the perfect place to fill that gap, I think.

Will Barber-Taylor: How do you think a lack of free school meals affects a child’s life chances more generally, including the grades they receive? I mean, I think you have touched upon that a little bit there already, but could you just expand a bit more about what the effect of the lack of free school meals is?

Mari Burton: I think one of the biggest aspects around free school meals is stigma, and just food in school is stigma, and how children and young people feel. When you are young, you are going through that formative process of becoming who you will be as an adult.

And I think there are a couple of different issues to kind of unpack there because there are children who are accessing free school meals and potentially feeling like they are the ones who are being picked out as having poor written on their backs.

And we speak to a lot of young people and a lot of people who have grown up on free school meals, saying they felt ashamed of themselves. They felt embarrassed, parents who are feeling embarrassed that they need this additional support. So there is a big issue there. And if we had universal free school meals, that would really tackle that. That would put everybody on an equitable level. It would mean that children can learn together, play together and eat together. And I think there is a massively important role that the community plays in that.

But then on top of that, there is a huge number of children who do not get free school meals, but are still growing up in poverty. So we know that 200,000 children last year were in households where there was food scarcity. So it might well mean that they have not eaten or they have missed a meal.

Children are not currently eligible for free school meals because the eligibility criteria are so low. You have to be on such a low income to be able to be granted free school meals in this country at the moment. You have to be receiving certain benefits, or your household income must be less than £7,400.

So if your family happens to have an income of £7,500, you do not get that free school meal. So again, there is this issue around the stigma of children who are then going hungry throughout the day and who may be embarrassed about it, who are anxious.

And in terms of how that impacts their life chances, if you are in school and you are worried about where your next meal is coming from, you are absolutely not going to thrive. You are not going to perform as well as you should.

And it is a huge disadvantage. And again, when we are looking at the very, very high-stakes exam systems that we have got, how can we expect children to deal with the pressure of that on top of having real-life concerns of their own?

Will Barber-Taylor: One thing that does strike me as something that it would be interesting to explore is, could you explain how we have got into this situation about free school meals? In terms of the threshold, how long has £7,500 been the threshold for free school meals?

Mari Burton: In terms of how long it has been since the threshold, that is a good question. Off the top of my head, I cannot remember exactly when this threshold was put in place, but it is very, very low, and it stands out as being very low when we compare the eligibility criteria in the rest of the UK. So, for instance, in Northern Ireland, you have to be on a little bit more than £14,000 to be able to be eligible for free school meals. So we have a very low threshold.

What is very, very alarming about that is that over the last few years, there has been a huge increase in children who are becoming eligible for free school meals. Now that is not because of government generosity or a real attempt to attack and tackle poverty. That is because there are so many thousands and thousands of families who are now being pushed into such depths of poverty that their children are now eligible for this meagre scheme.

And it has got to be said, there is a huge harm and a huge shame on society that we have so many children growing up genuinely concerned about how much food they get and parents and carers who are not necessarily able to support, to provide that additional support that they need.

And it is such a simple solution. It is something that can be so easily rolled out. In Wales, they are starting to roll it out; in Scotland, they have committed to it. They have committed to it in London, and we have this universal primary school rollout. We know it can be done.

There has been a lot of research into this, and there has been a huge amount of work done to show how you get so many benefits out of it. It is not just children who are from very, very poor backgrounds who benefit, but children from across the scale benefit if you increase this. I think in Wales, they are starting to roll it out; in Scotland, they have committed to it.

And we know that it improves the classroom atmosphere. We know that it improves concentration in school. We did a recent poll, which came out last week, which spoke to parents and children inside and outside of London and compared their experiences.

And half the children in London told us that they find it easier to concentrate, and their friends can concentrate better as a result of everybody having free school meals in their school, in their classroom.

So I think the facts speak for themselves. I think this can prevent a tremendous number of issues around public health, which we know is already a big concern. There are health benefits to this. There are educational benefits for this. And I think it comes down to just making sure that every child gets a nutritious meal at least once every day.

Will Barber-Taylor: Absolutely. You mentioned primary schools there, and as a campaign, you focused on free school meals in primary schools. How much would it cost to roll it out to areas of the UK which do not currently have free school meals for primary school-aged children?

Mari Burton: Well, I mean, first of all, I would like to just say that I think this has really got to be something that we see as an investment. I think it is a huge, huge investment in our children. And I think the fact that we are in the fifth richest country in the world and we have got millions of children who go hungry every day is a crying shame, and it has got to be something that is stressed.

And in terms of the costs around it, it is surprisingly, I think, something that does not cost as much as people are concerned about. It comes to around £890 million, which sounds like a big number, but again, when you think about the number of families this would impact, the number of children who would be raised by this and the huge benefits we would have as a country if we had every child able to achieve their full potential in school.

I think, to be honest, it is just a small change. A really interesting thing is that there has been some research done by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), which has looked into the kind of financial benefits of this and the actual economic cost-benefit analysis. And they found that for every pound that you put into universal free school meals, you get £1.71 back in gains.

And that is partly around people growing up and being able to pay more tax because they have better-paid jobs, pension contributions, that sort of thing. There is also a huge amount of savings that the NHS make because it tackles things like diabetes, obesity, and malnutrition.

At the moment, we are seeing children in London with rickets. Dickensian illnesses that are re-emerging. And so again, this is something that if we invest in our children, aside from actually that being morally the right thing to do, aside from the health benefits, the education benefits, economically, we gain almost double what we put in, which I think is just an amazing figure.

Will Barber-Taylor: Absolutely. I think that it is something that we at Centre Think Tank fully support, and it is something that hopefully we will be able to achieve in the not-too-distant future. Thank you once again for coming on, Mari. If people want to find out more about the National Education Union, where can they go to find out more about it? What can they do to get involved either with this campaign or any of the other things you are doing?

Mari Burton: That would be fantastic. And again, the more the merrier, we are all about building coalitions, and we are all about really using lots of different voices to say one thing. So if you are interested in finding out more about the campaign, then you can go to our website, which is freeschoolmealsforall.org.uk 

We would welcome more supporters as well for the wider work of the union. And that very simply is just nationaleducationunion.org.uk. Or you can search for us on Google because we come out on top of those results most of the time.

And again, the more supporters, the more people we can get behind this call for Free School Meals for All, the quicker this change will come. Because I do see it coming. We see lots and lots of different councils, again, those of London that have embraced this change and are investing in their young people. So now we just need the rest of the country to catch up.

Will Barber-Taylor: Absolutely. Hopefully, we can achieve this very soon. Thank you once again for coming on.

Mari Burton: Thanks very much.

Note: This interview has been edited for grammar, clarity, and flow. The original recording is the final and definitive version.