Poor children and the educational budget cut

Abstract

There have been recently published several national and international reports alerting about  the increase of poverty in Spain, because of the high unemployment rates of part of the population. Children are the main victims of this situation. Otherwise, the educational system has experimented an important budget cut which has many effects. These are the two main facts that led us to conduct a study about how the economic crisis impact in the daily life of a Primary School, in teachers and in students. A qualitative research has been developed to explore the economic crisis and budget cut impact in a rural state school. This school staff and most of the teachers answered a half-structured interview. Also elder students have been interviewed. Data analysis let us know and study in depth three dimensions of the topic: school, primary students and teachers. Due to the data, the results of the study have been organized around several themes: maintenance of the building, school resources, students main needs (feeding, clothes and footwear), students attitudes and behavioral changes and therefore teachers job conditions. Data content analysis shows many negative consequences of the economic crisis in students and teachers. We can clearly see that students with economic problems at home are also affected by money cuts at school. So that, it is urgent and necessary that this situation arise in order to open up ways to mitigate the negative effects.