Author: Wendy Varley
Nearly Half Island’s Children On Brink Of Poverty
Wednesday, 1st October, 2008 at 3:04 pm, Isle of Wight
We’d like to welcome new contributor, Wendy Varley, onto the VentnorBlog team. Wendy, a freelance journalist who lives in Yafford, has been a reader of the blog for sometime. We look forward to hearing her views on some of the issues that affect the Island. Ed
It was sobering to hear on Isle of Wight Radio news yesterday that nearly half of children (47%) here on the Island are living in or on the brink of poverty, with children in Ventnor, Sandown, Freshwater and parts of Newport the most likely to be affected.
The Campaign to End Child Poverty has ranked parliamentary constituencies across the UK according to how many children are living in low income families.
These are classed as families where no-one works more than 16 hours a week, or the family receives the full amount of Working Tax Credit.
A closer look at the details on the BBC News Web site shows the Isle of Wight comes 207th out of 646 constituencies in the UK poverty rankings.
In the South East region, only seven constituencies have a higher proportion of children living in low income families.
London rally on Saturday
The Campaign to End Child Poverty is staging a rally in London’s Trafalgar Square on Saturday October 4, called Keep The Promise, which calls on Gordon Brown to keep the promise to halve child poverty by 2010 and eradicate it by 2020.
You can read more about this valuable campaign to improve children’s life chances by ending child poverty, by visiting their Web site.
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The government has stated that it will halve child poverty by 2010 and eradicate it by 2020.
The government also states that inflation is at 4.7 percent, and we all believe that!
Still looking on the bright side at least you don’t have to queue in the supermarket any more as people can only afford the bare essentials in order to pay the Fat Cats for petrol, gas, electric etc.
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I know single parents who would like to work, but it’s not worth it, especially on the Island where it’s hard to find a well paid job never mind one that fits in with childcare. Equally there are those who breed without thought and who won’t ever have to pay a dime, and pass this ethos onto their kids.
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I don’t suppose any of this gets taken into account when reporting school performance?
According to the Joseph Rowntree Trust, “Low income is a strong predictor of low educational performance”. Pretty obvious, really, but it’s nice to have it confirmed by an authoritative source. It also suggests that the Island schools have always been better than the council would like us to think…
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Good point “James P”
although government(both central and local) are the only ones in a position to address child poverty, which they are failing to do given these figures, they are not taking into account the restraints put on those same children by those failings and the consequential effect that has on the children’s performance.
In other words they are taking a simplistic view and not comparing like for like.
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There is more about the impact of poverty on educational achievement on the The Campaign to End Child Poverty’s website (link provided in article above). Look at their News archive. To quote from it: “A child who is born into a poor family will be at an educational disadvantage before they have even learnt to say the word ‘school’.
“At just 22 months, a child from a disadvantaged background begins to fall behind children from more comfortable backgrounds. And then everything which happens in 13 years of education widens rather than bridges that gulf.”
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