School barometer: More child poverty in the classroom

A major social conflict such as child poverty is often reflected in small ways in schools. Here the pencil case or notebook is missing, there the lunch is missing, one is always called in sick shortly before a school trip, the other has never been to a museum, doesn’t go to the pediatrician or can’t swim. Teachers are something of an early alarm because they are with children and young people almost every day, as a representative Forsa survey commissioned by the Robert Bosch Foundation shows.

They therefore observe that the parents’ poverty is leaving increasingly clear traces in the classroom for boys and girls. From the perspective of teachers, child poverty is more present in all social situations than in the previous year, as the school barometer shows. This is a “dramatic result,” says Dagmar Wolf, who heads the education department at the Robert Bosch Foundation.

School supplies such as notebooks or books are often missing

In the survey published today – World Children’s Day – one in three teachers stated that children and young people were more worried about their family’s financial situation than before, and in socially disadvantaged situations the figure was even one in two (48 percent). More than one in three (37 percent) also notice that school materials such as notebooks or books are missing or inadequate, and students come to school without breakfast more often than before (30 percent). A quarter of teachers reported that their students were less likely to take part in multi-day school trips. And 16 percent are more likely than last year to find that their students cannot pay their lunch money at all or pay it too late.

“Poverty is extremely embarrassing for those affected,” says Wolf. Parents, children and young people have strategies to prevent their own precarious financial situation from becoming publicly visible. “For example, they do not receive visitors at home or submit a sick note at short notice for extracurricular activities that involve costs.”

“Poor children too often become poor adults”

Wolf also warns of the consequences of poverty: “Poor children too often become poor adults. This cycle must be broken,” she says. “A lack of money at home prevents young people from participating in social and cultural life. This also has an impact on psychosocial health.”

Educators need to become “poverty-sensitive” and be aware that there are families with limited financial resources. “Not only do they need to be able to recognize the impact of poverty on children and young people, but they also need to counteract stigma.” Poverty is not always visible to children. That’s why teachers need to know the proportion of students from social transfer families, says Wolf. “You need to know where there are difficulties at home in order to be able to approach them sensitively.”

2.2 million children and young people are at risk of poverty

According to figures from the Federal Statistical Office, almost 2.2 million of the approximately 14.3 million children and young people in Germany under the age of 18 can be considered at risk of poverty. Boys and girls in single-parent families or in families with three or more adolescents are particularly affected.

Because poverty is relative and cannot be measured by money alone, the term “risk of poverty” is usually used in Germany. If someone has less than 60 percent of the median income of the entire population, they are considered “at risk of poverty” – and so are children and young people from such households. According to the Federal Statistical Office, the threshold last year for a person living alone was around 1,250 euros net per month.

Student behavior is the biggest challenge

Child poverty is by no means the only problem facing teachers in the classroom, but it can be the source of further conflicts, as the latest school barometer shows again. What is striking is that respondents primarily mention the behavior of students when it comes to the biggest challenge in their job (34 percent). More than three quarters of teachers observe concentration problems in their classes (81 percent). Roughly the same number complain about excessive online use, for example through cell phones (79 percent), two out of three even complain about it in primary schools (66 percent). Every third teacher (31 percent) notices fears among children and young people. Most are also worried about motivation problems (70 percent) or aggressiveness (27 percent), although these values ​​have decreased compared to the corona pandemic.

Sabine Walper, director of the German Youth Institute (Munich), sees a lever in targeted social work, which, in her view, needs to be expanded significantly more. “The fact that there is a need and the urgent need to expand support for schools in socially disadvantaged areas is becoming very, very clear,” she says. “We see how widespread poverty is and how much it affects behavioral development.”

The German School Barometer

With the German School Barometer, the Robert Bosch Foundation has been conducting regular representative surveys on the current situation in schools in Germany since 2019. For the current issue, a total of 1,032 teachers at general and vocational schools in Germany were surveyed by the opinion research institute forsa between June 13th and 23rd, 2023.