In Kensington Town Hall last Wednesday night, a Labour councillor’s motion, “Assistance to Children in Poverty,” was slapped down by the permanent Conservative majority that dominates the council. A perfect allegory for the hopelessly dysfunctional politics of Kensington & Chelsea. 

Councillor Mohammed Bakhtiar’s motion was modest; he acknowledged the appalling rates of child poverty in the borough and the additional challenges created by the Covid restrictions. He called on the council to establish systems and allocate additional funds to address a crisis in which food poverty and job insecurity have compounded the difficulties faced by thousands of families. 

The Labour councillor’s motion noted that a quarter (4,500 according to the last census) of the borough’s children live in poverty, with most of them residing in working households. A report by WPU Economics for the Kensington & Chelsea Foundation in 2021 showed that almost half (45.3%) of the borough’s children attend independent schools, far higher than both the London (10.1%) and England (9.7%) averages. This means that, of the Kensington children not in private education, close to half are living in poverty. The WPU report also notes:  

• Black students in the borough have a gap in average Attainment 8 scores (a measure of progression in attainment) that is four and a half times larger than in England overall. 

• White British pupils eligible for Free School Meals in the borough are the largest educationally disadvantaged group in terms of GCSE performance and higher education. 

WPU Economics identified a wide range of factors that contribute to the borough’s educational inequalities: 

• RBKC had higher temporary and permanent exclusion rates in primary and secondary state schools than both London and England as a whole. (This has been worsened by the academisation process, including the unaccountable leadership installed at Holland Park School)

• Exclusions for Black and Mixed ethnicity students are twice as high as their White or Asian peers. For students with Special Education Needs provision, they are three times as high as those without. 

• Inadequate housing impacts education and 13% of RBKC households are overcrowded; 29.8 out of every 1,000 households are in temporary accommodation in the borough, compared to 17 in London 4.1 in England overall. 

• A combination of a lack of space to learn at home and language and cultural barriers has meant that many children struggled to access quality education during the period of Covid restrictions.^[i] 

If we break the statistics down geographically, they become even more stark. Census figures for Golborne ward in North Kensington revealed that 68% of children were living in overcrowded homes. On Henry Dickens Court in another northern ward, Notting Dale, child poverty was at 58% while in Queens Gate, South Kensington, it was 2.8%. 

Before Covid, communities in the north of the borough already faced a deteriorating situation; men in Golborne’s life expectancy had dropped to 72, while in a southern ward, Hans Town, they live 22 years longer. With a higher number of people from Black and minority ethnic communities residing in North Kensington, the area was disproportionately impacted by Covid. Office for National Statistics data showed Black males being over 400% more likely to die from Covid than white males. Parents of children living in poverty and overcrowded accommodation were also more likely to have a job deemed key to the economy, so many had to continue going to work while the laptop class worked from home, saving money and extending economic inequality.  

The obscene inequalities affect the south of the borough too, with cuts to services worsening the poverty already entrenched in Earls Court and Chelsea World’s End. 

Demand for tuition

While the borough’s third sector has worked valiantly to provide opportunities for children to catch up with lost learning following the counter-productive school closures, the demand has been difficult to meet in a funding environment in which charitable donations are declining.  

An education coordinator at local charity told us: “The cost-of-living has bitten down on families, and we’re still in the long shadow of Covid, so demand for our classes has sky rocketed. We’ve doubled our registrations for educational support in the last year.

“All children were negatively affected by Covid because most learning progress happens in the classroom. But children from economically disadvantaged families were hit the hardest, and it’s not because the children aren’t capable or they have the wrong attitude. Factors like a lack of financial resources in the family, unsettled home circumstances and having parents who don’t have a high level of UK education are decisive.

“Children from families with money have been negatively affected too, results are down across the board. But being able to afford private tuition and IT equipment stops them falling behind. Teachers at schools are now over-stretched so can’t give time and attention to those who need it most. So an attempt at equity in education is not unfair in any way. Investing in high-impact support will help all children because it would free up time in the classroom for all pupils.

“Education is the most important thing to invest in in any community. It lifts people out of poverty, breaks negative cycles in families and empowers individuals to improve their circumstances. There’s a net positive effect on every aspect of the local community, social and economic. Crime goes down, cohesion increases.”

It was in this dire economic and social milieu, and under the council’s giant crest with its motto ‘What a good thing it is to dwell together in unity’ that Labour councillors sought to make some inroads into addressing the educational inequality they see worsening every day in their wards. 

The Conservatives’ response was moved by Cllr Will Pascall of Chelsea and Cllr David Lindsay, former Mayor of Kensington:

The Tory councillors deleted from the specific actions proposed by the Labour councillors, namely identifying children in particular need of educational support and allocating funds to help them. The urgency in the Labour motion was replaced with a reaffirmation of the status quo and a specific focus on celebrating children at “grant-maintained schools” – the children already least in need of support catching up after Covid because they aren’t hampered by overcrowding, over-worked parents, poverty, and stress. 

Because of the rules of the game at the Town Hall, Labour, the minority party, could not oppose the majority party’s amendments; they could only voice their opposition in a debate, and policy remained unchanged. As it has since the 1960s when an in-depth study found that Kensington’s Tory councillors saw it as their duty to limit public spending strictly to the provision of statutory services and to encourage “self-help” among the poor. 

This was a boilerplate move from the Tories. Nothing has changed in the 50 years of the borough’s existence. No event, even the “most serious crime committed on British soil this century”^[ii] can shake the Conservatives’ complacency. Posh white people with property portfolios who pay other people to raise their children and clean their homes push “self-reliance” on impoverished young people while restoring the council’s bank reserves and keeping their voting base, who have no material problems, on high alert over Labour’s menacing attitude towards the Tories’ one local campaign issue: bin collections. 

The specific councillors who submitted the Tories’ response are typical Kensington toffs. Cllr Lindsay is an old Etonian, while Cllr Pascall apparently sent his children there. 

The council does not look like an administrative entity capable of responding to the needs of disparate groups in a time of widening inequality when senior councillors treat politics like a sport. The Labour councillors who spoke against the Conservatives’ amendments to the timely “Assistance to Children in Poverty” motion also have to reckon with Sir Keir Starmer’s determination to keep those same children in poverty as he appeases the donor base that he serves, many of whom live in Kensington. 

What a good thing it is to dwell together in unity.

By Tom Charles @tomhcharles

Art by THis Is North Kensington. Thanks to THINK for their editing too.

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^[i] All statistics in these bullet points are taken from Poverty and Prosperity in Kensington + Chelsea Understanding inequalities in a Borough of Extremes; A WPI Economics Report for The Kensington + Chelsea Foundation; November 2021 

^[ii] Peter Apps, quote from Show Me The Bodies: How We Let Grenfell Happen; Oneworld Publications