One in five Flemish children lives below the poverty line. The campaign’s goal is not to tackle poverty itself, but to raise teachers’ awareness of the problems it can cause in schools.

Poverty has an effect on most aspects of a child’s life, from clothing to diet. Schools are often ready to step in to help – for example, by contributing to the cost of extramural activities so that all children can take part. But schools report that parents are often reluctant to admit to having problems. Teachers are advised to look out for warning signs such as increased absenteeism.

“The school doesn’t know, and they don’t need to know,” says mother-of-three Sandra Carlier of her difficult financial situation. “I pay the rent as regular as clockwork, but other bills have to wait until the money is there. Sometimes the children come home and tell me, ‘Mama you haven’t paid the school bill’. They ought to leave my children out of it. Sometimes I get the feeling the school doesn’t trust me.”

Families living in poverty are more likely to be single-parent families or of immigrant origin. Parents are likely to be poorly-educated themselves – educational level is one of the most important predictors of poverty, which makes tackling the problem, according to Klasse, even more important: education is often the child’s only chance of escaping a poor background.

Language problems can also cause problems for children – for example by making it difficult or impossible for parents to help their children with homework or other assignments. Children fall behind their classmates, leave school without qualifications, enter low-paid jobs and the whole cycle begins again.

The Klasse campaign aims to encourage schools to strengthen the connections with parents, so that existing or potential problems can be identified as early as possible. Parents from higher income families are also targeted. “There is still a great deal of prejudice surrounding poor families,” explains Michel Van Laere of Klasse. “The impact of that should not be underestimated since it makes poor parents feel as if they ought to cover up their problems even more than they already do.”