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School staff resort to buying hygiene products for children in poverty

School staff admit to having spent as much as £40m of their own money buying items for children whose families cannot afford basic hygiene products – some are even washing pupils' clothes for them.
Dirty laundry: Campaigners erect a giant washing line in Westminster in a bid to highlight the problem of hygiene poverty to policy-makers (image: Clean Up Child Hygiene Poverty campaign)

Survey findings reveal that 80% of school staff say they have seen a rise in “hygiene poverty” in the last year, with 26% having seen children missing whole school days because of it.

A study published by the Clean Up Child Hygiene Poverty campaign and involving more than 500 UK teaching staff reported students regularly arriving at school in dirty uniforms and with unclean hair or teeth.

Teaching staff in the survey estimate that they have spent an average of £27 of their own money in the last year on hygiene prodcuts for their students – which would equate to more than £40m across the country.

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