Rhys Davies, Cardiff Socialist Party
The Welsh government is considering whether to scrap school logos on uniforms to ease the financial burden on families. But this is not enough, and is of little comfort to parents suffering right now.
The estimated average annual cost for a high school uniform is £337 per pupil, and I have three daughters in high school!
Demand for free school uniforms has rocketed as the cost-of-living crisis continues to bite. Cardiff charity ‘A Better Fit’ reports that second-hand clothes they’re donated leave their warehouse as soon as they arrive. Parents are now taking matters into their own hands, setting up their own swap shops for uniforms.
But it’s not just uniforms. A Welsh government study has found how one-in-ten parents had not sent their child on a school day trip because of the cost, and one-in-five had not sent their child on a residential trip. The likelihood of this increased among the lower-income households.
Add to that contributions to cookery lessons, design and technology equipment, art materials, charitable donations, contributions to school fetes and raffles, and cake stalls.
Over half of parents said that they purchased a school photo of their child during the last year; in the large majority of cases this cost was more than £10. Over two-fifths of the sample also paid for additional activities for their child such as a school disco, school play costs or other hobbies.
I’ve recently paid £600 for bus passes for my daughters to cover just the first term. It will add up to £1,500 for the school year for a bus they use only three days a week. The private bus firm, Adventure Travel is owned by a Singapore-based company which made a net profit of over £100 million in the first half of 2022!
Laura Doel, Director of the National Association of Headteachers Cymru, said schools have reported parents not sending their children in because they cannot afford to. Parents in Wales are now keeping their children off school because they can’t afford the uniforms, meals and transport.
More than a quarter of children in Wales are eligible for free school meals with a 1% rise in the last year. The eligibility criteria is extremely low. To qualify, working families on Child Tax Credit must have an income less than £16,190, or if on Universal Credit have net household earning less than £7,400 a year. Millions of children and families already facing soaring energy bills and using food banks or skipping meals, miss out.
The Welsh government, led by Labour and backed up by Plaid Cymru in a ‘cooperation agreement’, has agreed to roll out free school meals for primary school children by 2024. But why not immediately? Why not for all school children? And why not include free school transport and uniforms too? Prepared to use all its financial powers of borrowing and reserves, any council in Wales or England could choose to fund these steps immediately and demand that the government pays to make education truly free for all.
