A new Audit Office report has shone a light on how poverty affects children’s education in Northern Ireland.
About one in five children in Northern Ireland are living in relative poverty before housing costs, the report finds. Comptroller and auditor general Dorinnia Carville said there had been little sustained reduction in child poverty levels over the past eight years.
The report highlights the impact: children who grow up in poverty have lower levels of educational attainment, experience more health inequalities and are more likely to experience poverty as adults.
Children who receive free school meals are twice as likely to leave school with no GCSEs, the report shows. Those living in deprived areas are expected to live 11 to 15 fewer years in good health than their more affluent peers.
Attainment gap starts early
The Audit Office report states: “Evidence shows that the gap in attainment between children growing up in poverty and their peers starts early and lasts throughout school.
“By the time they reach primary school, children from low-income families are already up to a year behind middle-income children in terms of cognitive skills.”
It adds: “The relationship between health and income levels is also well established. Research has shown that childhood poverty is linked to higher levels of infant mortality and death in early adulthood, as well as poorer mental health, obesity and chronic illness.”
The report also says that the absence of affordable childcare is a “barrier to allowing parents to work and therefore providing households with more income”.
It states: “Northern Ireland does not currently have a childcare strategy and provides considerably less government support for childcare costs than in England, Scotland and Wales.”
The report explores the effectiveness of Stormont’s 2016-22 child poverty strategy and finds that, while tackling poverty is a cross-departmental executive strategy, departments often had not worked together.
“Siloed working can lead to siloed interventions and, ultimately, to poorer outcomes,” it says.
Lack of progress on child poverty
The report shows a lack of significant progress on the main child-poverty indicators, with about 20 per cent of children in Northern Ireland living in relative poverty before housing costs; between 7 per cent and 9 per cent living in low-income households that cannot afford basic goods and essential activities.
It finds that the 2016-22 child-poverty strategy set no clear targets for poverty reduction and had no ring-fenced budget attached. It also highlights a “lack of focus on early intervention and preventative actions”.
Ms Carville said: “Northern Ireland has not had a strategy to deal with child poverty for almost two years, during a cost-of-living crisis.
“A failure to tackle child poverty early and effectively risks lifelong impacts to children’s health, education and general development.
“There is also a considerable cost to the public purse, with previous estimates indicating costs of child poverty to be between £825 million and £1 billion annually.”
The executive in Northern Ireland has committed to a new anti-poverty strategy.
Ms Carville identified a need for “specific, long-term and preventive targets to save public money in the future”.
She added: “Early intervention, which reduces the number of children in poverty who become adults in poverty, could reduce future economic and social costs significantly.”
