CHRISTA ACKROYD ‘Don’t blame parents for the struggles many children face today’

IT is easy to look back on our childhood as the glory days. And for us they were. But that doesn’t mean we deserve a pat on the back for growing up when we did. That was merely an accident of birth. And it certainly doesn’t mean we can continue to ignore the fact that children today are living in different and infinitely more complicated times. And millions of them are not living well.

More importantly, I absolutely detest any sense of smugness that we got it right and therefore children or their parents today are to blame for their lot. In the vast majority of cases they are not. And to those who believe it is not their problem, it is. As the song goes, children are our future and for many that future looks far bleaker than ours ever did, even with all the opportunities we are told they have. The sad fact is that without a good start in life, they won’t be able to grasp those opportunities.

The first snow fall of winter will inevitably lead to a host of memes picturing young children in the Sixties trudging through the drifts walking to school. I was one of them, maybe you were, who walked more than a mile to school and who left our snow crusted coats after a pre-school snowball fight hung on our coat pegs and dried out frozen socks on the massive clanking school radiators, swapping oversized wellies for school pumps and carrying on whatever the weather.

The inference is obvious. We were made of stronger stuff. That our world was a better one and we lived in a healthier and happier age, even if we had to scrape the frost off the bedroom windows in homes with open fires and no central heating. And in a way it was. But that is no fault of young people today.

Of course, as children we were oblivious, as children are, to the fact that some of our classmates received free school meals. There were not many and although I can remember a handful who handed over a different coloured dinner ticket to ours, it made little impact on us. Fueled with good food, we played out together for hours in all weathers. That’s just how it was.

For goodness sake, from birth our mothers put us outside in our prams in everything but driving snow and rain to get some fresh air, while even as youngsters in winter we set off alone to meet friends to go sledging on the open fields near our house having called on them to see if they were ‘playing out’. And we wandered home weary and happy in the dark to warm ourselves in front of the fire until our faces glowed and our legs became mottled, while our mums ran us a hot bath which slowly warmed us through before jumping into an ice cold bed.

Our classrooms were heated to a certain extent often by huge, inefficient boilers that would invariably break down a couple of times a year, leaving us to be taught wearing our school coats. I can probably count on one hand the number of times we were were sent home from school because it was too cold to learn. Although I do remember that when the power gave up the school cooks served sandwiches instead of the school dinners we often complained about, but which, by and large, were tasty, home cooked and nutritious. I can still conjure up the taste of a spam fritter (not my favourite) or a chocolate sponge and white custard (which definitely was).

We played out in all weathers. In fact we hated the days when the weather was so bad our lunchtimes were spent in a crowded school hall. We were starving hungry by the time we walked home but then my mum and maybe yours was always there with a home cooked meal. Just as she was always up bright and early every morning to make sure we went to school having eaten breakfast. In summer it could be cereals or toast. In winter ever single day it was porridge or Readybrek, probably influenced by the warm glow surrounding the children who ate it on the adverts. Because yes, we were lucky in so many ways.

Children these days are no different to how we were. They are as bright as buttons and willing to learn. They have open minds and the same hopes and aspirations as we had, if we encourage them. They learn at different paces, are better at some things than others, and just as we were, enjoy the camaraderie of the classroom. But there the similarities end. With the best will in the world, we could not allow our children to walk miles to school these days. It simply isn’t safe. And not only the traffic is a danger. Adults are. We would never allow children today to experience the freedom of playing out unsupervised from dawn til dusk. The world is an infinitely darker place now than it was then.

And as for the news this week that four million children go to school without breakfast and that almost three quarters of a million of them are taught in schools deemed to be dangerous, that simply breaks my heart.

I care not whether parents simply do not understand the nutritional value of three square meals. Fast foods and constant bombardment of expensive ready meals are only part of the problem. I care not who is to blame that many young people do not get enough exercise in their younger years and that obesity is a serious issue. The fact is in 2023 we are failing millions and millions of young people for whom their start in life, as well as to the school day, is sadly lacking. And we must do something about it.

Hungry children simply cannot learn. That is a scientific fact. That 39 per cent of the school population turns up to school hungry but only one in five has access to a breakfast club is worrying for their future and for the future of the country. It is as the wonderful Dame Prue Leith said this week ‘a disgrace’ . It is also a false economy. Especially when you consider that 10,000 schools in England have high numbers of vulnerable kids but only a quarter offer free breakfasts, which by the way would cost only £18m from budgets of billions to role out in 2,500 classrooms.

I know many of you will disagree with me, citing tough times when we were growing up, maybe even blame the parents. But that’s the easy cop out. Many parents today need help, not judgment. As the bills go up and the food banks struggle to fill the shelves with an ever increasing demand, the sad truth is many households with young children are struggling to both eat and heat. To blame the parent only adds to their sense of failure. And as a nation we must pledge to be there to support, not condemn. We can start by mending the schools and feeding those with not enough fuel inside them to allow them to achieve their possibilities.

Because one thing is certain, it is not the child’s fault if their classrooms are crumbling and their tummies are rumbling. As I say so often, as a nation we are better than that.