School is often not free and the charges applied in certain subjects frequently squeeze out pupils from poorer backgrounds, a Scottish parliamentary inquiry has heard.

MSPs were also told that many poor pupils are missing out on school trips, including one that children often consider is the highlight of their time at primary school.

John Dickie, director of the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) in Scotland, told the inquiry on poverty and attainment yesterday: “The reality is that, too often, education isn’t free - what’s offered in schools isn’t free, pupils are being charged for it.”

Although more than 95 per cent of pupils in Scotland go to state-funded schools, CPAG has found in work across Scotland that certain subjects - usually the more practical ones - often apply prohibitive charges. Mr Dickie added that expensive visits to the theatre for English had also been cited as a problem.

“There seems to be a real issue with charging for materials in home economics, technical, art and design, also drama,” Mr Dickie said, adding that this created a “cost barrier” that was “excluding” pupils from some parts of the curriculum.

He said that the CPAG had heard from both young people and teachers who said that this was influencing which subjects students decided to take.

There was some “good news”, however, as some schools and local authorities had scrapped such charges, leading to increased participation in the subjects affected, Mr Dickie said. Some schools had used the Pupil Equity Fund (PEF) - similar to England’s Pupil Premium - to remove costs for school trips and charges in subjects such as home economics.

But such charging remained common and attempts to mitigate the impact on poorer families were “very variable” around Scotland, Mr Dickie said.

Poorer pupils ‘miss out on key school trip’

School trips are a problem, he fears, especially P7 residential trips which are an “absolutely major part” of the final year of primary school but could cost well over £300 per pupil in some cases.

The CPAG had “evidence across Scotland of children being left behind” and, in a survey of schools in one local authority, it found that, on average, three or four pupils in every P7 class were “not participating in the P7 residential”.

At the first evidence session of the poverty and attainment inquiry, which is being run by the Scottish Parliament’s Education and Skills Committee, Mr Dickie said: “When you hear pupils talking about what a big part of P7 that is, the impact that that must have on those young people left behind’s sense of school, [their] sense of what education has to offer…it’s hard to believe that that doesn’t have an impact [on attainment].”

Mr Dickie said that schools needed a clearer understanding of what they were obliged to offer to every young person in the curriculum, and more support and guidance on the benefits of “removing any financial barrier to participation” in these areas, so that it “becomes the absolute norm in schools across Scotland”. He also called for a national review of what it is acceptable to charge for in schools.

Kevin Lowden, a researcher at the University of Glasgow’s Robert Owen Centre for Educational Change, told MSPs that there was evidence to suggest trips to museums, cultural events and outdoor experiences have an impact on disadvantaged students and help to close the attainment gap.

This, Mr Lowden said, “makes it all the more crucial that those opportunities should be part of the strategy in schools and local government”.

Meanwhile, in a separate parliamentary session today, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon spoke about PEF, which is in its second year and in 2017-18 will see £120 million distributed among around 95 per cent of schools, in an attempt to find innovative ways of closing the poverty-related attainment gap.

A crucial aspect is that schools are not told how to use PEF money, said Ms Sturgeon. It is a fundamental principle that schools should decide locally how the money would be best spent, she added, even if some uses of it may “raise an eyebrow”.

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