A conference was held yesterday to give officials the chance to come up with ideas to tackle child poverty in Moray.
Charities fear many children are missing out at school due to the costs associated with pupils attending classes such as home economics and woodwork.
One of the aims of the event was to come up with solutions for the future to ensure schools are more inclusive for the children of parents facing financial difficulties.
The Cost of a School Day conference at Elgin High School was attended by councillors, charity leaders and other organisations yesterday.
It was organised by the Fairer Moray Forum in partnership with the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) in Scotland and the Poverty Alliance.
An action plan will now be written up to help combat child poverty in Moray.
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Cathy Ross, CEO of Moray Foodbank, one of the partners in the Fairer Moray Forum, said: “Our remit at the minute is to develop a poverty strategy for Moray and to develop a child poverty action plan which will go to the government at the end of March.
“One of the big issues that young people in Moray have flagged up to us is the cost of particular subjects like art, home economics, woodwork, these kind of things have a cost implication for parents but really we should be looking at having no cost to parents.
“It’s really restrictive for kids who want to achieve, like one of the examples given is you could have a Jamie Oliver in the class but you are not going to be able to find that out because his particular family can’t afford for him to do the domestic science courses so can’t provide the equipment or ingredients and can’t access the class.”
CPAG were behind recent plans to launch a similar child poverty action plan in Dundee.
Sara Spencer, CPAG Cost of the School Day project manager, hailed the event as a success.
She said: “There’s been lots of useful discussion about all the barriers children can face in schools. We’ve looked at issues such as school uniforms and school meals, basically costs across the whole school day.
“Everyone in the room was really passionate about this, and everyone is keen to do something about it which is always the first step in the plan.”
