A CHARITY has called on new Prime Minister Theresa May to take urgent action on poverty in the North-East as the region becomes the free school meals capital of England.

New research demonstrates a link between students claiming free school meals and achieving low GCSE grades, prompting charity Schools North-East to push for a government strategy to better support struggling families.

Middlesbrough has the highest number of pupils eligible for free school meals in the region with 27.5 per cent of the area’s pupils qualifying - making it the sixth worst area in the country for school poverty.

The town is followed closely by Newcastle with 23.7 per cent and Hartlepool with 22.1 per cent, while Darlington has 17.3 per cent of pupils eligible for free school meals.

The statistics, collated using the Government’s annual National Pupil Database, show that overall 18.4 per cent of pupils claim free school meals in the North-East - almost double that of the South-East - with 15.5 per cent in Yorkshire and Humberside.

Mike Parker, director of Schools North-East said: “Poverty is the single greatest barrier to pupil success in the classroom.

“Unless our region unites against inequality we are damaging the life chances of young people and gambling with the long-term future prosperity of the region.”

The link between poverty and grade attainment is clear when only one in four white British boys and less than one in three white British girls who are eligible for free school meals achieve five or more A* to C GCSE grades.

Research shows that schools with more children getting free meals have a larger amount of teachers with little experience, without formal teaching qualifications or without a degree in the subject they are teaching.

However, the number of children eligible for and claiming free school meals has dropped over the past four years by 2.5 per cent in the North-East and 2.8 per cent nationally.

The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) notes that many children eligible for free school meals through pupil premium are not registering for it and the association has long argued for automatic registration to be implemented.

Pupil premium is the additional funding made available by the government to publicly funded schools to raise the attainment of disadvantaged pupils and close the gap between them and their peers.

Russell Hobby, general secretary of NAHT, said: “Pupil Premium is a vital and well understood tool for narrowing the gap for children from families with lower incomes but the pupil premium is not being taken up by every eligible child.

“The data to auto-register eligible children is available, it just needs to be shared with schools.

“Automatically registering children for the pupil premium would put a serious dent in social inequality.”