Nine in 10 state-funded secondary schools have provided clothing for pupils as teachers are asked to do more with less, a survey of headteachers has revealed.
Almost half of the headteachers who took part in the survey (47%) said they washed clothes for their pupils and practically all (96%) said they had seen the levels of poverty among their students increase in the past few years.
The rise in poverty levels hit young girls particularly hard with 71% of headteachers saying they now feel obliged to provide sanitary products.
According to the research conducted by the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), three-quarters of schools now provide breakfast clubs to help feed their children to help tackle the increase in pupil poverty.
On Wednesday, Chancellor Philip Hammond announced schools would get free sanitary provision from September.
It comes as headteachers have been warning that their budgets are being squeezed tighter and tighter ever year.
The government says funding for education is higher than ever before, but the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said funding is down 8% in real terms compared to ten years ago.
Michael Ferry, headteacher of St Wilfrid’s Comprehensive School in West Sussex, said: “We want to be included in finding a solution, don’t fob us off with statements like ‘there’s more money in education than ever before’. We’re not idiots, we know what it’s like it is on the ground.”
ASCL questioned 407 headteachers, representing 11% of state-funded secondary schools across England and Wales.
All but two of the headteachers reported increased demand for in-school mental health support, while 98% had experienced difficulty in accessing local mental health services for pupils who need specialist treatment.
Ferry said on top of the lack of resources they had, teachers were being asked to do more and more as local authority services are no longer able to provide the support they used to.
He added: “Teachers aren’t just teachers anymore. They need to be teacher, mental health practitioner, social worker, police officer, in some cases mother, in some cases father. That’s what we are faced with all the time, and it is the thing that undermines our ability to our very best.
“If we don’t solve these issues now we will be consigning our children to a mediocre education.”
Ferry’s comments echoed the findings of the ASCL study, which revealed 92% of the respondents said there had been local authority cutbacks in support for families and young people.
Alan Brookes, the headteacher of Fulston Manor in Kent, said he felt like his school was “on the brink” and facing the double whammy of less funding and increased demands.
He said: “There are huge challenges around the most vulnerable, we are receiving more and more requests to increase our support for them because there just isn’t the support for them outside of school that there used to be.”
ASCL general secretary Geoff Barton said: “A decade of austerity has wreaked havoc with the social fabric of the nation and schools have been left to pick up the pieces while coping with real-term funding cuts.
“We simply must do better for struggling families and invest properly in our schools, colleges and other vital public services.”
One headteacher who took part in the survey said: “Some of our students do not have a winter coat for the freezing weather. Some have a free breakfast at school and free lunch because they are free school meals and then do not have dinner at home.
“Some feel they have to help with the earnings and provide food for the family even though they are only 11/12-years-old themselves.”