SOME young children whose parents cannot afford to provide them with shoes and meals are skipping classes and taking food from school home, teachers have warned.

At the National Union of Teachers (NUT) section of the National Education Union (NEU) conference, primary school teachers are describing how their pupils are malnourished with grey skin and broken nails.

Some pupils are also seen wearing their uniforms at the weekend because they have nothing else to wear, they said.

According to the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), four million children in Britain were living in poverty in 2015-16 – equivalent to nine in every classroom of thirty pupils.

Union activists urged prime minister Theresa May to take action on poverty, claiming that educational attainment is increasingly becoming secondary to alleviating financial troubles amongst pupils.

A poll of around 900 NEU members found that 87 per cent of education workers think that poverty is having a significant impact on the learning of their pupils.

While the government said that it is taking measures to close the attainment gap and tackle the problem of poverty, teaching delegates warned that the situation was getting “significantly worse”.

A Cumbrian delegate said that she was aware of pupils stuffing their blazer pockets with food because it is unclear whether they would receive another meal that day.

“In some establishments I would imagine that would be called stealing, but in ours it’s called survival,” she said.

NEU general secretary Kevin Courtney said the Tories are “doing the opposite” to helping children by aggressively cutting school budgets.

He condemned the government for having “saddled” schools and teachers with a “regressive high-stakes testing and accountability regime” that is wholly counterproductive.

“The growing number of pupils that teachers see coming to school hungry is a particularly stark and harrowing example of rising levels of poverty,” Mr Courtney said.

“The government’s changes to eligibility for free school meals under Universal Credit will result in one million children living in poverty and going without a free school lunch.

“The government must listen to the many voices that have spoken out against this change, and reverse it.”