The level of child poverty in Scotland has reached such a critical stage that teachers were advised on how to detect if a student suffers from hunger in the middle of the issue's serious effects on education.
The advice, printed on booklets, will be handed out to schools next week all over Scotland. This raises the issue of hunger among students because it has been "moving from the exceptional to the more commonplace," The Independent reported.
The reminders will be issued through the initiative of the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) after a survey of over 300 institutions showed that teachers are already extending more help towards malnourished students.
"This new booklet, which has been written by teaching professionals and based on the first-hand experiences of teachers and lecturers working with young people across Scotland, offers useful guidance for teaching staff and advice on poverty-proofing class activity and home study assignments," EIS Equality Convener Bill Ramsay said, according to the Educational Institute of Scotland website.
"In the 21st Century, in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, children going unfed is both wholly unacceptable and entirely unnecessary."
Save The Children, the leading organization for children all over the world, conducted a study in 2011 reflecting the causes and effects of the severe child poverty in Scotland.
In 2011, 90,000 children in Scotland were living in extreme poverty; that is 9 percent, or 1 in 3, children suffering from hunger, according to the Save the Children study.
These children could be living in unemployed households with parents having no access to job opportunities or training possibilities to boost their skills. The children are affected with these circumstances, which result in missing out on school trips and other activities that halt their educational and social development.
"The fact that food poverty now affects such a large, and growing, section of society should shame those in government and elsewhere who continue to push the damaging and divisive austerity-above-all agenda," EIS General Secretary Larry Flanagan said. "However, teachers and lecturers can and do make a very real difference in the lives of the young people that they work with on a day to day basis."
"The poverty-proofing measures suggested in the guide can, we hope, assist teaching professionals in trying to mitigate, as far as possible, the impact of low incomes on young people's educational experience," he added.
Save the Children U.K. introduced Families and Schools Together (FAST) in Scotland to bring the community together in creating opportunities for children's development. Watch the video below.
