The list of problems that schools are facing is endless - a teacher recruitment and retention crisis, creaking buildings, a lack of provision for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), a growing disadvantage gap and more.

Labour has promised to fix these issues - with plans ranging from the introduction of free breakfast clubs in all primary schools and a promise to recruit 6,500 more teachers to a major overhaul of Ofsted and the launch of a curriculum review.

But if the government really wants to help schools then, according to policy experts and charity leaders speaking at the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool on Sunday, the best thing it could do would be to lift more children out of poverty.

Speaking on a panel, Sam Freedman, senior fellow at the Institute for Government and senior adviser to the education charity Ark Schools, said the “key schools policy issue at the moment is the crisis of vulnerable children”. These children, he said, include those living in poverty, as well as pupils with mental health problems and SEND, which economically disadvantaged children are more likely to have.

“[These issues] put huge pressure of schools, which have become the provider of last resort for young people,” Freedman said.

The impact of child poverty on education

He added that “teachers are spending more of their time” helping students with these issues - and less time on teaching. “That drives people out of the profession - and then you have a teacher workforce crisis.”

While Labour is undertaking a curriculum review, Freedman said this fails to target the bigger problem: “I don’t think we need big changes on the academic side. We need support for all of those negative trends that are creating these problems for schools.”

Alison Garnham, chief executive of the Child Poverty Action Group, agreed, claiming that poverty is now so widespread that an average of nine children out of every class of 30 experiences it, which is having a huge impact on education.

“Schools have become the front line. [Teachers] are having to deal with the results of child poverty - and that isn’t their job,” she said.

Garnham added that living in poverty directly affects children’s experiences at school: “They feel less safe, they’re more likely to be bullied. They’re more likely to be absent from school and have poor mental health. They can’t afford school kit. They return to cold homes.”

Teachers “are running food banks, washing clothes, even buying food for kids. They’re doing all kinds of ameliorative activities that take them away from their main focus. That needs to stop,” she said.

Garnham said that the previous Labour government - whose strategy lifted more than 1 million children out of poverty - proved that change can be made. “Child poverty is policy responsive,” she added.

In agreement, Freedman said: “If I were [education secretary] Bridget Phillipson - or advising Bridget Phillipson - I think all of her focus should be on resolving this crisis.”

Phillipson was not in the room to hear that. But her colleague Liz Kendall, secretary of state for work and pensions, was and claimed that tackling child poverty “is a priority for this new Labour government” , pointing to the cross-government child poverty taskforce, which Kendall will lead with Phillipson and will publish its strategy in the spring.

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The panel warned that tackling child poverty will not be cheap: the Resolution Foundation predicts that ending the two-child benefit cap, for example, would cost £2.5 billion.

So, asked panel chair Peter Foster of the Financial Times, are policies such as free breakfast clubs in every primary school - which Labour says could cut almost half a million days of school absence - merely “window-dressing” when it is clear that far more needs to be done to erase child poverty?

Kendall dismissed this, saying that ensuring children are well fed in school can’t be overlooked. “You can’t learn without food in your belly,” she said.

But Kendall acknowledged she was “under no illusions that [this] doesn’t bring the number of children who are living in poverty down”. She cited another Labour policy, the New Deal for Working People, which aims to boost wages across the country, as another way that the government is addressing child poverty.

Freedman acknowledged that anything that puts more money into the economy could only help: ”It is ultimately about money...That is the best route out of poverty.”

Joining up services

The way that different government policy approaches can combine to help schools and their work with disadvantaged children was also emphasised by Abby Jitendra, principal policy adviser at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, at another conference event on Sunday.

“Particularly for families in poverty, having a system that joins up early years, schools, health visitors and other kinds of specialised support will be what makes the difference,” she said.

Picking up on this point around early years provision and its link to schools, Meghan Meek-O’Connor, senior policy adviser at Save the Children, said the charity sees “childcare as a really critical tool that can be used to help reduce child poverty”.

She said better early years provision would help schools, describing the “transformational” effect she has seen in nurseries making closer links with schools, “in terms of ease of access, as well as the ease of transition”.

This links to another Labour policy of providing nursery provision in primary schools. Sarah Smith, MP for Hyndburn and Haslingden, who was recently announced as the national mission champion for the “Opportunity Mission”, said on the panel that this could also help identify to children with SEND earlier.

“I think part of the challenge that we have in our schools is that we’re not getting the earliest bit right,” she said. “These kids are not in the right sort of provision.”

Of course, any action to tackle poverty and reduce its impact on schools will cost money - something that Labour has yet to say anything on ahead of the Budget in October, and which the party’s own MPs seemingly have no insight on yet.

“There’s very little being said right now about what’s going to be in the Budget,” said Smith. “I’m not better informed than any of you, unfortunately.”

Overall then, while Labour MPs certainly want to show they are aware of the scale of the challenges that schools face due to wider social issues (and believe they have the policies to help), all eyes will be on the Budget to see if the government puts the funding forward to deliver.

Ellen Peirson-Hagger is senior writer at Tes