On the day the Education Bill receives its second reading in Parliament, Relationships Foundation, the think tank for a better connected society, is highlighting the cost of family breakdown to the education sector.
According to our Cost of Family Failure report, family breakdown soaks up nearly £3 billion of the education and training budget each year. That would build 120 new schools every year, or employ 120,000 teachers.
The total cost is the sum of six areas:
| Education and Young People NEET | (£billion) | (£billion) | |
| Disciplinary and behavioural problems | 1.12 | ||
| Vandalism and criminal damage in schools | 0.63 | ||
| Free school meals | 0.21 | ||
| Education Maintenance Allowance | 0.17 | ||
| Tertiary education | 0.15 | ||
| Young people NEET | 0.63 | ||
| 2.92 | |||
Commenting, Michael Trend, Executive Director of the Foundation said:
“The cost of family failure to our education system is astounding.
“This is just the financial cost – who can estimate the price paid by children not given the chance to fulfil their potential, and teachers worn down by surrogate parenting?
“The Education Bill addresses the 30 or so hours a week children spend in school – but if we really want a first class education system, the Government needs to worry about the 138 hours a child spends at home.”
For further information, please contact Sam Barker, Head of Family Policy, on
07817 523 116, or s.barker@relationshipsfoundation-org.stackstaging.com
www.relationshipsfoundation.org
Notes to Editors
· A full methodology is available in our Cost of Family Failure Report (p.27ff).
www.relationshipsfoundation.org/counting-the-cost-of-family-failure-42bn
· The Cost of Family Failure Report found that the total cost of family breakdown to the UK was £41.74 billion in 2010-11. This is £1,364 for every taxpayer. The total cost has risen by £70million since last year. The index looks at the cost of family breakdown to five key areas of public policy: Tax and Benefits, Housing, Health and Social Care, Civil & Criminal Justice and Education & Young People not in education, employment or training.
· Marriage and Education
o A comprehensive review of research evidence through the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on the impact of divorce and separation on the outcomes for children shows that children of separated parents perform less well in school and gain fewer educational qualifications, experience behavioural problems and leave school and home when young. (1)
o Family failure affects children’s educational attainment and behaviour in and attitude towards school. Delegates at the annual conference of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers in 2008 said chaotic home lives and poverty made children unable to learn.(2) Research consistently shows that optimal school outcome is significantly associated with increased parental education, child-rearing by two parents and stability in family composition and geographic residence. (3) Children in care, 98% of whom come from broken families, (4) are the lowest achieving social group. Only 15% of children looked after obtained at least 5 GCSEs or GNVQs at grades A* to C, compared to 70% of all school children in year 11. (5) They are also much more likely than their peers to be “not in education, employment or training” (NEET). (6)
o Lone parenthood is a growing family type, accounting for 26% of all families with dependent children in 2009. In the same year, 3.2 million dependent children (24%) lived in lone parent families. This figure is rising as an increasing number of children are born outside marriage. In 2008 there were 320,800 live births outside marriage in England and Wales, accounting for 45% of all live births that year. 21% were registered by parents living at different addresses, while 14% were solely registered. (7)
§ This growing group of children do less well at school, have more mental illness issues and are more disruptive. They are also 75% more likely to suffer educational failure.(8) While educational failure might result in a host of potential personal lifetime costs, such as reduced earnings and employment opportunities and impaired social mobility, there are a number of education-related costs associated with family breakdown that the taxpayer has to shoulder annually.
· Teachers as parents
o The General Secretary of the National Union of Head Teachers complained that teachers had to spend time giving children the social skills that should have been given by the family. He also noted that parents weren’t feeding their children properly and ensuring they got a good night’s sleep. (9)
o The General Secretary of the teachers’ union Voice, has warned that a decline in parenting skills had created a generation of children without moral boundaries, resulting in teachers being increasingly forced to discipline bad behaviour and take on the role of bringing up children. (10)
· Estimating each area:
· Disciplinary and behavioural problems
o Using data from the Teachers’ Workloads Diary Survey 2009, we can estimate the amount of time teachers spent dealing with tasks related to disciplinary or behavioural problems. We add in costs of Pupil Referral Units, and teacher training in this area. Using academic studies, we can estimate the proportion attributable to children from broken families.
· Vandalism and criminal damage in schools
o One primary school, in Swansea, spent £300,000 to counter vandalism after being targeted by yobs 16 times in a space of just 9 months. (11)
o Department for Education data returns provide capital and staffing costs of facilities management. We estimate the proportion attributable to vandalism, and the proportion of that attributable to broken families (for example 70% of young offenders come from broken families). (12)
· Free school meals
o A quarter of all couple families are on benefits. From this, we assume that a quarter of the lone parent families would be on benefits even if they were in a couple relationship – and thus that 75% of lone parents would not be on benefits except for family breakdown. 73% of children on free school meals are from lone parent families, therefore we assume that 55% are on free school meals because of family breakdown.
· Education Maintenance Allowance
o Almost 90% of students who received FSM at school received EMA and almost all of them at the top rate. 75% of 17-18 year-old full-time students from lone/no parent background received EMA. (13) We do a reverse calculation from this.
· Tertiary education
o We estimate the drop-out costs attributable to family breakdown, and the estate costs to higher education institutions borne by the taxpayer.
· Young people NEET
o 16 year olds from lone parent households are twice as likely to leave school with no qualifications as those from intact families. (14) Compared with children growing up with both parents, children from lone parent families are twice as likely to be unemployed. (15) We therefore attribute around two thirds of NEET costs to Family Breakdown.
· Work by the Centre for Social Justice, Why is the Government anti-marriage? (16) found that if you are not brought up in a two-parent family you are 75% more likely to fail at school And 35% more likely to experience unemployment/welfare dependency
· School and Teacher costs. According to the House of Commons Education Select Committee, the average cost of a new build under Labour’s Building Schools for the Future programme was between £25m and £30m. According to the TDA, the average starting salary of a teacher is £22-27,000.
· Marriage Week UK runs from the 7th to the 14th February (17)
The Relationships Foundation, established in 1993, is a Cambridge-based independent think tank seeking a better connected society. It studies the effect that culture, business and government have on relationships. It proposes new ideas for strengthening social connections, campaigns on issues where relationships are being undermined, and trains and equips people to think relationally for themselves.
ENDS
(1) Rodgers, B. and Pryor, J. (1998), Divorce and Separation: The Outcomes for Children, York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
(2) Eason, G. (2008), “Toxic cycle of family breakdown”, BBC News, 18 Mar, (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/ education/7303003.stm), accessed on 1 Feb 2011.
(3) Gross, S.J., Mettelman, B.B., Dye, T.D. and Slagle, T.A. (2001), “Impact of family structure and stability on academic outcome in preterm children at 10 years of age”, Journal of Pediatrics, 138(2): 169-75.
(4) House of Lords (2004), op. cit.
(5) Department for Children, Schools and Families (2010), op. cit.
(6) House of Commons Children, Schools and Families Committee (2010), Young People Not in Education, Employment or Training, Vol.1, London: The Stationery Office.
(7) Office for National Statistics (2010), Social Trends 40, op. cit.
(8) Social Justice Policy Group (2006), op. cit.
(9) The Times (2004), “Bad parenting fails pupils”, 4 May.
(10) Clark, L. (2008), “Pushover parents to blame for generation of children who ‘lack discipline and moral boundaries’, says teachers’ leader”, Daily Mail, 30 Jul, (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1039762/ Pushover-parents-blame-generation-children-lack-discipline-moral-boundaries-says-teachersleader.html), accessed on 1 Feb 2011.
(11) Llanelli Star (2008), “Schools count the cost of vandalism”, 30 Jun, (http://www.thisissouthwales.co.uk/ news/Schools-count-cost-vandalism/article-293876-detail/article.html), accessed on 26 Jan 2011.
(12) Youth Justice Board figures quoted in Ware, J. (2009), op. cit.
(13) Bolton, P. (2011), Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) Statistics, Standard Note SG/5778, London: House of Commons Library.
(14) Ely, M., West, P., Sweeting, H. and Richards, M. (2000), “Teenage family life, life chances, lifestyles and health: A comparison of two contemporary cohorts”, The International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family, 14(1): 1-30.
(15) O’Neill, R. (2002), Experiments in Living: The Fatherless Family, London: CIVITAS.
(16) http://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/client/downloads/Marriage%20Paper%20FINAL%20_iii_.pdf