Tasks: Poverty in the United Kingdom

Use the internet to find answers to the questions below. You will find links to useful information in the expandable box below.

1. How is poverty measured in the UK?
2. What is considered to be the poverty line in the UK?
3. How many are poor in the UK today?
4. How many children live in households below the poverty line in the UK?
5. How many people are homeless in the UK?

As an alternative to the traditional presentation, this task asks you to pick a topic which you explore and discuss in a podcast. Click on the expandable box to find information about what you need to make a podcast.

• Choose one of the topics below and find out more about it. When you have enough material, make a podcast about it.
• Work in groups of two or three.
• Remember that podcasts often have a strong human-interest angle, so don't be afraid to find and use examples of people's experiences.
• The podcast should be around ten minutes long.

(It is of course also possible to use these tasks to make a more traditional presentation.)

Food poverty:

Food poverty refers to being in a situation where you either don’t have enough food to eat, or there is great uncertainty where your next meals will come from. According to The Guardian, food uncertainty in the United Kingdom is among the highest in Europe. 3.7 million children live in households that are unable to provide nutritious food in keeping with the United Kingdom health guidelines.

Find out more about this topic: Why is food poverty an issue in the United Kingdom, and who is affected by this?

Marcus Rashford's campaign for free school meals:

In Britain, most children get meals at school. Children whose families cannot afford the meals get them for free. For many poor children the school meal is their most significant meal of the day. When schools closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic many children in the United Kingdom went hungry. Manchester United footballer Marcus Rashford petitioned the government to provide free school meals for these children.

Find out more about what the campaign was about, why Marcus Rashford started the campaign, and what the campaign has achieved.

Period poverty

In 2019 Ginger Comms carried out a survey of 931 girls and women that showed that 27% could not afford essential sanitary products. Lacking appropriate menstrual protection caused 26% of the girls and women to miss school or work. A survey from 2017 carried out by Plan UK showed that 10% of girls between 14 and 21 could not afford the sanitary products they needed.

Find out more about this topic. Why is this an important issue, and what is being done to help poor girls and women in the UK overcome this problem?

Homelessness:

The average life expectancy for homeless people in the UK is 44 years. The worst form of being homeless is sleeping rough, which means you sleep outside or under makeshift shelters. Homelessness means having no long-term place to live, relying instead on temporary accommodation like homeless shelters or rooms that are rented for a short period of time. Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and England all measure homelessness differently, so it can be difficult to find overall figures for the UK. In 2019, 32,220 households were homeless in England. It is estimated that 135,000 children are homeless in the United Kingdom.

Find out more about the topic of homelessness: Who are affected by homelessness? What is it like to be homeless?

Austerity:

In 2007–2008 there was a global financial crisis. In response to the financial crisis, the United Kingdom government launched an austerity programme intended to reduce government spending. This meant a reduction in funding for policing, housing, and welfare in the United Kingdom.

The first austerity measures were instituted in 2008. Prime Minister Theresa May declared the programme complete in a speech in 2018. However, because of Brexit, many fear there will not be much money for housing, policing, or welfare in the future.

Find out what the austerity programme was, how it affected poor people in the UK, and discuss if things have improved since Theresa May declared the end of austerity in 2018.

Pick one of the topics from the podcast task above and make a quiz about it. The quiz should contain questions about central information related to the topic and should contain at least ten questions.

You can hold the quiz by making questions and reading them out in class, or you can use a quiz tool like Kahoot. Link to the webpage Kahoot.Com