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March 2024 - Education

Nearly half of teachers have come across homeless pupils, survey finds: A recent survey has found that almost half of teachers at state schools in the UK have encountered pupils who are or have become homeless in the past year, with Charity Shelter’s results suggesting that teachers think the problem is going to get worse this year (2024).

Charity Shelter commissioned a YouGov survey of 1,017 state school teachers in the UK. The teachers were from primary and secondary schools. The YouGov survey was on the teachers’ experiences of the consequences of the “housing emergency” at their schools.

Results from the survey revealed that 48% of UK state school teachers said their school had children who are homeless or who had become homeless in the past 12 months. Furthermore, almost two-thirds (64%) of the teachers surveyed said they think the number of children who are homeless or in a bad housing situation will increase over the next year.

In November 2023, the Government published statistics showing there were 138,930 children in temporary accommodation (a form of homelessness) throughout 2023, this was a record high since the first measure was taken in 2004. With teachers believing it is only going to get worse, more records will be broken.

Polly Neate, Shelter’s chief executive, said: “An alarming number of teachers are bearing witness to the horrors of homelessness and bad housing that families tell our services about every day. Appalling stories of children falling asleep in class because they don’t have their own bed, and parents filled with worry because they can’t even cook a hot meal in their grim hostel without a kitchen.” 

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