Our kid-friendly version of the child poverty strategy teaches all children empathy and compassion

Every child deserves to understand their world – and know we’re fighting for them.

When I was growing up, there were things I didn’t have words for. I knew that life felt harder for some children than others. I noticed the gaps – who had what, who went without – but I didn’t always understand why. Nobody sat down with me and explained it. 

Child poverty is a stain on our country. Almost one in three children in the UK is growing up in relative poverty today. In a typical classroom of 30, that’s around 10 children. Ten children whose ability to learn, to thrive, to simply feel secure is being chipped away – not because of anything they or their families have done wrong, but because the system has failed them. 

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We know what that failure costs. Children who grow up in poverty are more likely to fall behind at school, less likely to go on to good jobs, and more likely to carry the weight of that hardship into adulthood. In England, by the time children reach the end of secondary school, those growing up in disadvantage are on average nearly 20 months behind in their learning. That is not inevitable. It is a choice - and this government is choosing differently. 

In December, we published our child poverty strategy – the most ambitious plan to tackle child poverty in a generation. It will aim to lift 550,000 children out of poverty by the final year of the parliament, the largest expected reduction in a single parliament since records began in the 1990s.  

It removes the cruel two-child limit, expands free school meals to every family on universal credit, rolls out free breakfast clubs and Best Start Family Hubs, and puts more support where families need it most. 

That means more children having the support they need to get into and stay in education, employment or training as an adult, more achieving good GCSE results and doing well at school.  

And today, we’re doing something else. Something that might seem smaller, but that I think matters enormously. 

We’re publishing a child-friendly version of that strategy. 

It’s designed for children aged five to 11 – written in plain, accessible language, with colourful illustrations, to spark conversations in classrooms and kitchen tables across the country. It’s a resource for teachers and parents who want to talk about poverty with children in a way that’s honest, age-appropriate, and above all, reassuring. 

Because here’s the truth: many of those 10 children in every classroom already know what poverty feels like. They don’t need protecting from the concept – they’re living it. What they need is the language to understand their own experience, the reassurance that it is not their fault, and the knowledge that people in government are working to change it. 

But this resource isn’t just for children experiencing poverty. It’s for all children. Because developing empathy, understanding why some families struggle and others don’t, learning about fairness and community – that is a vital part of growing up. We want every child to leave primary school with a sense of compassion for others and the confidence to speak up when something isn’t right. 

Alongside the child-friendly strategy, we’re publishing a children’s rights impact assessment – an official examination of how our strategy measures up against the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. I’m proud to say its conclusion is clear: our strategy has a positive impact on children’s rights, advancing their right to development, to a decent standard of living, to health and to education. No negative impacts were identified. 

Children and their families were central to developing the child poverty strategy. We worked with organisations including Save the Children, Barnardo’s and UNICEF, and commissioned the Children’s Commissioner’s Office in England to hear directly from children themselves – including from some of the most vulnerable and least-heard groups. 

That spirit of listening is what I want to keep at the heart of everything we do. It’s not enough for government to make decisions about children’s futures without involving children in that conversation. Today’s publication is a statement of intent: that this government takes children’s voices seriously, that we believe they deserve to understand the world around them, and that we are committed to making it better. 

Child poverty is not inevitable. It is a political choice, and we have made ours. 

Bridget Phillipson is the Secretary of State for Education.

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