We can learn to do much better

LES WALTON on how we can tackle child poverty in the North East through education

- 

THE Children's Commissioner has recently argued that schools should focus on "education, not welfare". Whilst I applaud her new focus on child poverty this is a view that risks drawing a false line between learning and the lived reality of children’s lives.

In the North East, where child poverty is the highest in the UK, this separation simply doesn’t hold. You cannot close attainment gaps if children are hungry, excluded, or unseen. You cannot raise standards by ignoring the conditions in which children live.

I offer a different perspective - one rooted in experience, evidence, and moral clarity. I argue schools must not be reduced to compensating for poverty, nor expected to fix it alone. But they can and should be central to a regional system that challenges inequality at its core.

This is a call for poverty-aware, trauma-informed education reform - where schools become not just places of learning, but drivers of justice, dignity and hope. In the North East, we have the expertise and courage to lead that change.

In the North East of England - a region rich in history, identity, and community - child poverty remains one of the most entrenched social injustices. Too often, schools are expected to “compensate” for this disadvantage rather than confront and dismantle its root causes. But what if education, far from being a passive response to poverty, became the most powerful force in ending it?

A growing movement of educators, advisers, and school leaders across the North East is demanding just that - a region-wide, school-led response to poverty that is rooted in equity, quality and hope.