The major survey, organised by homelessness charity Shelter, found kids without a safe and secure home experience exhaustion, missed school days and poor mental health
More than half (52%) of teachers in England have worked at a school with children who are homeless in the past year.
Nearly a third (31%) said a child or children they personally taught or interacted with was homeless, while a further 20% were aware of a homeless child they didn’t personally teach.
The major survey, organised by homelessness charity Shelter and which involved 7,127 state school teachers, found kids without a safe and secure home experience exhaustion, missed school days and poor mental health.
Three quarters of teachers said that being homeless had led to children performing poorly in assessments or exams, while 92% said it was leading children to come to school tired. Some 83% said children had missed school due to homelessness, with Shelter highlighting that parents face challenges due to being moved between different temporary housing at very short notice.
Three quarters of teachers told the survey, which was carried out by TeacherTapp, that homelessness has had a significant impact on the mental health of the children they teach.
READ MORE: Scandal of homelessness to be halved by 2030, ministers pledge
Labour’s new National Plan to End Homelessness, unveiled last week, pledges to halve the number of people forced to sleep on the streets and end the scandal of families being trapped in B&Bs. And the Government’s child poverty strategy also vows to end the “unlawful placement” of families being forced to stay in Bed and Breakfasts beyond the six-week limit with an £8million emergency fund.
More than 175,000 kids are living in temporary accommodation, with families regularly moved at short notice between B&Bs, hostels, bedsits and flats, Shelter said.
Sarah Elliott, chief executive of Shelter, said: “The housing emergency is infiltrating our classrooms and robbing children of their most basic need of a safe and secure home. Children shouldn’t have to try and balance their studies with the horrific experience of homelessness.
“Teachers are witnessing the same devastating effects of growing up in temporary accommodation on children that our services see every day. Feeling cut off and isolated, children are showing up to school exhausted after long commutes from accommodation that is many miles away.
“Others are struggling to concentrate whilst dreading another night in a cramped B&B room where they have no space or privacy to study for crucial exams.
“With the public’s support, Shelter’s frontline services will keep doing everything possible to support families facing homelessness this winter and beyond. But to protect children from ever experiencing the harms of homelessness, the government must ramp up the delivery of genuinely affordable social rent homes by setting a national target for delivery. We need 90,000 social homes a year for ten years.”
Matt Wrack, NASUWT General Secretary, said: “Homelessness is taking an enormous physical and emotional toll on children and young people, which is adversely affecting their education and ability to learn.
“These children’s future life chances are being put at risk due to their lack of a secure, safe and permanent home. If their education suffers now, that is likely to have repercussions which could potentially last a lifetime.
“Teachers and school leaders are pulling out all the stops to help mitigate the effects of homelessness on these pupils and their families, but they cannot fix our national housing crisis. The Government needs to go further and faster to make sure that no child’s opportunities in life are blighted by the lack of a safe and secure place to call home.”
Paul Whiteman, general secretary at school leaders’ union NAHT, said: “When children are living in temporary accommodation, this can affect their ability to attend school, and to focus and flourish in the classroom.
“While the government’s new child poverty strategy included some welcome measures – like reducing use of B&Bs and requiring councils to notify schools and health services when a child is placed in temporary accommodation – these figures show the scale of the challenge.
“We hope these policies will be built upon in the government’s upcoming homelessness strategy, and that ministers, across all relevant departments, will have a laser-like focus on ensuring these strategies are aligned, implemented and supplemented with further measures to tackle the cause and symptoms of poverty wherever necessary.”
An MHCLG spokesperson said: “No child should be trying to learn without the security of a settled home. That’s why we’ve made changes to ensure schools can now support pupils experiencing homelessness at the earliest possible opportunity, while our comprehensive homelessness strategy, backed by record funding, will addresses the root causes of homelessness and set us on a path to ending it for good.”
‘Being homeless for so long was really depressing and stressful’
A mum who was homeless for 12 years with her now 14-year-old son has said their experience was “really depressing and stressful”.
Ayeasha Pemberton, 47, from London, and her son were moved between five temporary accommodation properties during this time, many of which were riddled with disrepair. At one, they experienced serious flooding which led to their ceiling collapsing.
The last property they were moved to was so far away from Ayeasha’s son’s school he could not live with her during the week. They have been in a social home since June, but it is unsuitable for Ayeasha’s disability.
Ayeasha said: “Being homeless for so long was really depressing and stressful. For the first couple of years, I didn’t realise how much it was affecting my son. We were moved so far away from my son’s school that he couldn’t live with me during the school week.
“It was very disruptive for him. He’s very active and likes to get involved in stuff like football training and matches, and sometimes he couldn’t do everything he wanted to because we were so far away from his school and friends.”
She added: “We’re in a social home now, but it’s not suitable for my needs so I’m working with a Shelter advisor to move to a new home. After years of uncertainty and moving around, my son is still very unsettled. He’s working hard for his GCSEs next year, but years without a stable home has made it hard for him to focus on school and taken a toll on his emotional wellbeing.
“It’s unacceptable that children are being uprooted from their homes suddenly and moved to a whole new area, far from everything. Everybody deserves to be treated fairly and it’s just not right that so many families are experiencing homelessness.”