The Insurance Charity has launched a School Essentials Grants programme during its annual Awareness Week, offering financial support to insurance professionals with school-age children who are struggling with education-related costs.
The programme provides awards of £250 per child in the UK and €300 per child in Ireland to help cover school clothing and footwear, equipment, activities and trips. It is open to current and former insurance professionals across the UK, Ireland and the Channel Islands who are in receipt of means-tested benefits.
Helen Sanson (pictured), chief executive of The Insurance Charity, said: "We know that many families continue to feel the impact of the cost-of-living pressures that have affected household budgets over recent years. Through the School Essentials Programme, we're providing targeted support that can make a meaningful difference at a practical level for families heading into the next academic year."
The School Essentials programme represents a meaningful expansion of the Charity's existing grant framework. Unlike standard financial grants, applicants do not need to have experienced a specific misfortune such as redundancy or illness. Eligibility is based on means-tested benefit receipt, making the programme accessible to a broader group of insurance workers who may be in employment but still under financial pressure.
The Insurance Charity, founded in 1902, is the UK and Ireland's only dedicated insurance industry charity. It awarded £1.4 million in support in 2023/24, up from £1.3 million the previous year, and covers the full breadth of insurance employment from underwriters and brokers to claims handlers and administrative staff, without requiring applicants to be members of any industry body.
The launch reflects the scale of financial strain that school costs continue to place on UK families. Parents are spending an average of £442 to equip a child for secondary school and £343 for primary, according to government analysis published in April 2025. Among families on the lowest incomes, 54% report struggling to afford the uniform their child needs.
Those figures sit against a wider picture of financial difficulty across the UK workforce. A survey of 5,000 UK workers conducted at the end of 2025, published in Reed's 2026 insurance and financial services salary guide, found that 26% have £100 or less left each month after essential bills, with 7% reporting their entire salary goes to essentials.
Financial wellbeing has moved sharply up the agenda for insurance employers in that context. Research published by the CIPD in February 2025 found that 31% of UK employees said money worries had negatively affected their work performance, rising to 37% among those earning less than £40,000 a year, with 30% reporting they could not cope with an unexpected £300 bill.
At the same time, constrained pay budgets have limited what employers can do to address the problem directly. The increase in employer National Insurance contributions that took effect in April 2025, with the rate rising from 13.8% to 15% and the threshold dropping to £5,000, has restricted pay budget headroom, with most employers reporting salary increases of around 3% in 2025.
The timing of the launch also coincides with renewed legislative attention on school costs. The Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 will limit the number of branded uniform items that state-funded schools can require, with new rules expected to take effect from September 2026.
While that legislation is designed to reduce costs over time, the burden on lower-income families remains acute in the near term.
