Walk through the entrance of Discovery Primary School in Greenwich, south-east London, down a corridor and through a set of doors, and the building bursts with light. The sun shines through two giant skylights. Children’s work adorns the walls; flags representing different countries hang overhead. But enter a Year 6 classroom – for pupils aged ten and 11 – and you start to get a sense of what schools are contending with today.
Inside a cupboard, alongside stationery and books, is a red duffle bag – the kind you’d carry a PE kit in. In it, there are sanitary towels, spare knickers and wipes. Discovery has provided period products “for years”, deputy head Vicky Archer said. This year, they have received 150 pads from the government’s period product scheme, but staff used to supply them themselves. This isn’t unique. “I honestly cannot imagine a school in the country that isn’t doing that right now,” Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) teaching union told the New Statesman. A survey of close to 15,000 teachers and support staff in 2025 revealed the majority of schools provided period products to children; one in five teachers had paid out of their own pocket to do so. Research by child hygiene poverty groups estimates that in 2024, teachers spent a combined £40m of their own money helping struggling pupils.
Those working in schools say the problem is getting worse as more families are living in poverty. Where once children would arrive without having eaten breakfast, Archer said they now lack basic hygiene, too. “At Discovery, we do our own food bank at Christmas; the staff here bring in the items,” she explained. Last Christmas the parents asked if the school could “provide things like toothbrushes, toothpaste, nappies, baby wipes, because those are so expensive and would really help”. Archer estimates that 40 per cent of the school’s families are in hygiene poverty.
Staff are paying from their salaries for the school to have a permanent supply of products for children. Archer has a small cupboard of supplies: toothbrushes, pants, cereal. It is not unheard of for a teacher to pop down to Tesco to get something specific a pupil needs. “When that child is in front of you, you don’t care about anything else other than, ‘Oh my God, why has that child not been able to brush their teeth? Let’s sort this problem out.’”
Data suggests child hygiene poverty is increasing. A 2025 survey by the National Education Union found 71 per cent of teachers (and 74 per cent of support staff) had seen pupils with poverty-related poor hygiene. A majority also reported pupils with dirty clothes. According to 2024 research from the Hygiene Bank, a community-led charity, an estimated 4.2 million adults in UK are unable to afford the basic toiletries and products to keep clean – up a quarter from 2022; 15 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds experienced hygiene poverty. In Kind, another charity trying to ease hygiene poverty, paints an even worse picture: its research indicates that 9.9 million UK adults are in hygiene poverty. Among households with children, a quarter were going without essential hygiene products.
Archer told me that, as private rents have gone up, many families have been moved out of the local Thamesmead area and placed in hostels and hotels instead. A sizeable proportion, she said, aren’t eligible for most benefits. “Lots of them are in [budget hotels] and, obviously, there are no [clothes] washing facilities.” The school has encouraged families to bring in their laundry – making use of a new washing machine installed this year as part of the Suds in Schools programme, run by sustainable laundry products company Smol. But few have taken up the invitation.
Discovery is one of 103 schools in the UK that have had this sort of “mini launderette” installed. The machine here, nestled under a counter in the staff room, is used regularly. A nearby school (with a more affluent intake) has donated hundreds of items of used uniform, still in excellent condition, which Discovery has washed and used to set up a make-shift uniform shop, allowing new pupils starting at the school to receive a free uniform.
But the washing machine’s primary function is to tackle hygiene poverty. “Parents are saying, ‘it’s about feeding my children’,” Archer explained: they can’t wash uniform regularly because they can’t afford the laundry products. It is most often used by staff acting discreetly, aware of the risk of embarrassing children or upsetting parents. “A staff member will say, ‘Let me take that jumper, you’ve got your school dinner on it. I’m just going to chuck it in the wash, then your mum doesn’t have to worry about it.’” The school will then provide a fresh shirt or jumper to put on.
It is clear teachers are no longer expected “just” to teach. “More so than ever our children are in nappies,” Archer explained. The proportion of primary school children unable to use the toilet independently is at its highest ever, she said. In Year 1, some five- and six-year-olds will need changing during lessons. If children have accidents, dirty underwear is washed and pupils given a new pair – purchased by staff. The government has also asked teachers to take part in supervised toothbrushing in an effort to reduce the number of children admitted to hospital for tooth decay.
The ASCL’s Di’Iasio told me 85 per cent of his conversations with headteachers now are not about education at all. Problems stem from “beyond the school gate” and “most of the issues that young people present with are connected to poverty”.
[See also: Gordon Brown: Child poverty is a scar on our national conscience]
Twenty-five miles across London, from south-east to south-west, I meet Julia Westgarth on a small industrial estate. The Twickenham branch of The Hygiene Bank is run out of a self-storage unit: 50 square feet containing everyday toiletries and cleaning products. Westgarth has been involved with the scheme since 2019, but said, during the pandemic, “the need for the service went exponential. And sadly, since then, it hasn’t really quietened down.”
From this tiny room, the Twickenham Hygiene Bank delivers supplies to schools, food banks, a women’s refuge, youth centres and care-leavers’ homes. Around 700 people each week, about half of whom are children and young people, receive help. In the first four months of 2025, Westgarth and her four volunteers delivered two tonnes of products; across the UK, the Hygiene Bank has distributed more than 2,000 tonnes since it began in 2018. “The long-term plan is that we will no longer need to exist, but I think we’re a long way from that,” Westgarth said.
“Julia will come and visit us each half term,” explained Rochelle McIntyre, outreach worker at nearby Marjory Kinnon school. This school for children with special educational needs and disabilities (Send) has partnered with Twickenham Hygiene Bank for three years. “What’s most in need are soap powders, soap itself, shower gels, sanitary products,” McIntyre said. Fifty families are currently being helped. “A box of Ariel [laundry] pods is practically a tenner,” she told me. “There’s no surprise that some of our students are coming in with school uniforms that they’ve probably had on for the whole term.”
McIntyre explained how teachers will approach her – “SOS Hygiene” – after noticing a pupil is in dirty clothes. Sometimes she will send home detergent capsules, but some families “don’t want to be rescued”, she said. “If they say ‘no, I’m fine’, for whatever reason, we can’t force the engagement.” There is shame in not feeling clean, or not being able to provide everything their children need.
“We don’t want to come across as though we’re patronising them,” she added. Interventions must be handled delicately. On occasions the school has provided a whole class with a gift pack of toiletries, so it does not seems as if one pupil and their family is being singled out.
Young people wearing the same school shirt for more than a week because of poverty is a “regular occurrence” in UK schools, according to Di’Iasio. “You can only imagine the impact on [children’s] self-esteem and the way they feel about themselves,” he said. “We would have students kicking off just to get told off before a PE lesson, because the truth is they didn’t have PE kit,” he recalled. “You can get quite isolated if you’re a child who isn’t washing.” The name-calling can be “horrendous”.
For Di’Iasio, the government’s long-awaited Child Poverty Strategy – supposedly due this spring – cannot come soon enough. The laundry company Smol, the Hygiene Bank and teaching unions have urged those in charge to place hygiene poverty “squarely within your Child Poverty Strategy”. The government responded, but “disappointingly, there was no specific mention of hygiene poverty, despite it being an everyday reality for so many families”, a spokesperson for Smol said.
Those representing the country’s teachers argue child poverty is a political choice. “I’ve got no doubt that Labour see themselves as the party that wants to end child poverty,” Di’Iasio told me. Yet he is worried about the impact of planned welfare cuts on families who are already struggling, and of cuts in public sector funding. “To govern is to choose, isn’t it? And what I want to see is some choices that are pro young people, that make a difference for young people.”
Staff who see the impact of child hygiene poverty every day believe those in power simply do not understand the scale of the problem. “It started quite slowly, but I feel like it’s starting to run away with us,” deputy headteacher Vicky Archer reflected. “It’s going to get to a point where we can’t fund it ourselves.” Is it the responsibility of teachers to ensure the poorest in society can wash, do not have to share toothbrushes with family members, and have clean clothes to wear?
“It’s a massive issue facing the country,” Di’Iasio argued. “It needs a strategic response,” from government and others. “We’ve got to get better,” he urged. “We cannot continue as we are.”
[See also: Why George Osborne still runs Britain]
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This article appears in the 21 May 2025 issue of the New Statesman, Britain’s Child Poverty Epidemic