Siobhan Collingwood said a significant number of pupils in her school in Morecambe, Lancashire, were from families who rely on food banks and have no means of feeding their children.
“When children are food deprived it alters their behavior and they do become quite food obsessed, so we have some children who will be stealing fruit cores from the bins,” she said in an interview to the BBC.
The teacher added that many children did not reveal to the school authorities that they were from poor families.
“We have children who have nothing in their lunch boxes and children who are just fixated upon food,” she said, adding that there were currently 35 children at her school who were definitely from families dependent on food banks.
The UK has seen a surge in the number of food banks over the past years, especially since the Conservative government introduced austerity measures in 2010 to cope with financial difficulties after recession.
A United Nations report issued in November noted that the UK government’s recurrent cuts to social care budget had left a fifth of the country’s population, around 14 million people, in poverty.
Morecambe told the BBC that in her school, parents had been “arriving at school literally bursting into tears telling me they have no means of feeding their children”.
“Families are coming in telling me they are routinely loaning food to each other, my day-to-day experience is telling me this is a growing problem,” she stated.