Meghan releases new photo of Archie to mark sixth birthday
The Duchess of Sussex has marked Prince Archie‘s sixth birthday with a touching tribute.
Sharing a photograph of Archie silhouetted against a fiery sunset, Meghan captioned the image, “Our son. Our sun.”
She added the message: “Happy 6th birthday to Archie! Thank you for all of the love, prayers, and warm wishes for our sweet boy.
“He’s six! Where did the time go?”
The Duchess also revealed that the family had held a celebration to mark Archie’s birthday.
“For all of you who came to celebrate with us at his party last weekend, thank you for making his birthday so incredibly special,” she wrote.
Archie’s celebrations, held thousands of miles away from the royal family in the US, took place after the Duke of Sussex’s bombshell interview with the BBC in which he said the King will not speak to him and he does not know how much longer his father has left.
Harry, speaking after losing a Court of Appeal challenge over his security arrangements while in the UK, said he “can’t see a world in which I would be bringing my wife and children back to the UK at this point”.
On Tuesday, Meghan revealed that she consulted an Ayurvedic doctor during her pregnancies with Archie and his little sister Lilibet.
On the latest episode of her Confessions of a Female Founder podcast, she discussed her interest in the ancient Indian holistic health system while interviewing Hannah Mendoza, the founder of Clevr Blends.
The conversation also explored the benefits of adaptogens, including mushrooms, which are thought to reduce stress.
Acknowledging that some might view this approach as unconventional, Meghan noted, “I think a lot of people when they hear mushrooms, they go ‘OK, she’s talking about being hippie-dippy, grounded in all these things’”.
She also admitted that the fungus often carries other “connotations”.
“If you aren’t familiar with adaptogens, you can go to this place of ‘Oh, it’s feeling a little psychedelic and super woo-woo’,” she said.
I travelled to Kentucky’s Trump towns – here’s why you should too
Kentucky has bourbon and horse racing – and arguably the best of both in the world. You can explore the Churchill Downs in Louisville, follow the Bourbon Trail through Lexington, catch a race meet out in Keeneland and enjoy a dose of Americana along the main street of quaint Bardstown.
But what most tourists won’t do is keep driving east out of Lexington, beyond the boutique hotels, hipster speakeasies and revered tasting rooms and deep into the Appalachian mountains.
Against the backdrop of Trump raising tariffs, while many travellers were cancelling their trips to the US – and with CNN warning of US recession and deportations in the soundtrack to my evenings – I drove deep into hill country, weaving my way through small towns and farms, as rolling hills gave way to rugged mountains.
This is the heart of Trump country; a haven for second amendment rights, where religion and rural values reign.
I was headed for the Tri-Cities, three towns in southeastern Kentucky close to the border with West Virginia. Cumberland, Benham and Lynch were once thriving coal mining towns, basking in the steel boom that kicked off in the 1910s, but as the industry declined, almost completely tailing off by the turn of the 21st century, the miners moved away. In Harlan County, home of the Tri-Cities, the population dropped from around 42,000 in 1980 to a little over 23,000 a couple of years ago. Poverty is currently twice the national average, unemployment remains high and drug use is rife.
With Trump throwing environmental concerns to the wind and promising the return of a booming coal industry (in April, the US president signed four executive orders designed to keep coal-fired power plants open), many residents cling stubbornly to the hope that mining will come back to these decimated towns. In the 2024 election, 65 per cent of the vote went to Trump in the state of Kentucky, with 118 of the 120 counties going red (only Jefferson and Fayette, where Lexington and Louisville are located, had a Democrat majority). Harlan County overwhelmingly voted for Trump.
I pull into Benham as the sun is setting, casting a golden hue over the surrounding Appalachian mountains, and highlighting the delicate pink blossom in the trees. If you ignored the Trump ‘Keep America Great’ flag waving gently in the evening breeze, it would be an almost idyllic setting. There’s a church (of course), a couple of tennis courts (unexpected), a raggedy little store named ‘bits and bobs’, and the Kentucky Coal Museum, which looks permanently closed.
At Benham Schoolhouse Inn a sweet elderly lady greets me, warns me not to feed the black bears in the parking lot, and informs me there are only three guests for the night. A little creeped out, I squeak my way down the deserted corridors of the former school, past old grey lockers still containing stickers from former students, poking my head into classrooms adorned with bible quotes. I’m told guests report hearing ghostly children’s laughter and playful voices in the corridor at night. But this isn’t a sinister or unwelcoming place; in fact, the rooms are exquisitely clean, the wifi flawless, the coffee decent, the shower hot, and the staff kind and attentive.
This is the reason I’ve come to Benham. While some Harlan County residents await the much-promised return of the coal industry, others have taken their coal mining tradition and sought a new way to bring back prosperity: through tourism. Benham Schoolhouse was built in 1926 to educate the children of the coal miners who worked in the area, and it continued in this role until the 1990s. Seeing an opportunity to attract visitors to the area, in 1994 the schoolhouse was transformed into a 30-room inn. It’s very quiet the night I stay (which doesn’t help my rather frayed nerves), but I’m told that during weekends it’s often fully booked out.
The lady at the front desk smiles and informs me that “there’s nothing here” when I ask where I might eat in Benham, then directs me to neighbouring Cumberland. Here, I find a little more life: there’s a Dollar General, a liquor store, a gun and pawn shop, a hairdressers, a Subway and a smattering of local stores and restaurants, including Luigi’s Italian and Rosemary’s Hut.
The lights are still on at Luigi’s and, while delighted by my accent, the staff look thoroughly bemused by their visitor. “Why would you come here?” one woman pops her head out from the kitchen to ask. And that familiar refrain: “There’s nothing here.”
While waiting for my pizza, staff take turns keeping me company, informing me about the best hiking spots, asking me about Outlander (they tell me that Appalachia looks a lot like Scotland), and showing me YouTube videos of black bears stealing pizza boxes off front porches.
Despite the friendly welcome, the Tri-Cities may feel like an odd choice for a holiday – especially for an international visitor. But the executive director at Harlan Tourism, Brandon Pennington, says that tourism has been a “lifeline” to the region and its post-coal economy.
The following day he tells me: “Tourism has helped diversify our economic base, spurred small business growth, and driven reinvestment into our downtowns.”
There’s a growing trade in outdoor adventure – hiking, all-terrain vehicles, fishing, camping and the like – but much of the draw for visitors comes from coal itself. Brandon says: “Like many Appalachian communities, Harlan County faces the ongoing challenge of redefining its identity after the collapse of the coal industry. We’ve battled population decline, economic stagnation, and the perception that rural places can’t thrive. But here’s the truth – tourism has been breathing new life into Harlan County, and it’s not just a hopeful idea; it’s a lived reality.
“It’s helped create jobs, support local artisans, and preserve our culture in a way that invites others to experience it with us.”
After listing the many attractions of the area, Brandon, somewhat defiantly, adds: “Harlan County’s story is one of resilience – and tourism allows us to tell that story loud and proud – on our terms.”
On my second day in Benham I discover the Kentucky Coal Museum is actually open. I’m the only visitor (and I get the sense that I’ve been the only visitor in a while), but I’m greeted warmly and informed that my $8 ticket means I can stay as long as I like.
The museum is filled with somewhat bizarre, but completely intriguing, exhibits set out across four sprawling floors. It’s like an exuberant school project with a few mannequins thrown in. There are also some half-packaged Christmas decorations knocking around (it’s mid-April). I wander through models of what the town looked like in the 1920s, learn about coal miner’s daughter Loretta Lyn who became a country star, and browse X-rays of miner’s lungs scarred by years of inhaling deadly coal dust. In the basement, I crawl onto my hands and knees and scramble through an rickety exhibition that shows what it was like in the mines.
But it’s in Lynch, a five-minute drive down the road, that I get a taste of a real Kentucky mine.
As I head into the town, the ghostly skeleton of the abandoned coal-powered plant rises to the side of the road. Long abandoned to nature, it sits as a reminder of glory days past.
Kentucky had just experienced a tornado followed by once-in-a-generation torrential flooding that flattened entire neighbourhoods, but today with the late spring sun shining down over the Appalachian mountains and the air smelling of freshly cut grass, it’s altogether quite pleasant. A couple of children riding their bikes stop to wave hello as I pass through.
Due to a computer failure, tours aren’t running at Portal 31, but Nick and Devin say they’ll take me into the mine anyway.
Nick Sturgill grew up in Harlan County and mining runs in the blood, with his father, grandfather and great grandfather all former miners. He’s chosen to stay in the area to raise his own twin daughters, enjoying the peace and making a living through coal in a slightly different way.
The Portal 31 mine extracted its first coal in November 1917, and until 1963 the men who worked here for US Steel, many of them immigrants, pulled 120 million tonnes from its recesses.
Now Nick, accompanied by Devin Mefford who works part-time while studying at college, takes visitors on tours of the mine, chugging through the darkness in an old rail car and telling the story of these thousands of men who spent their working lives in the darkness.
Along with unemployment, many miners now suffer from black lung syndrome, caused by years of inhaling poisonous coal dust. Unable to work and struggling to breathe, they also find themselves constantly blocked from receiving healthcare or compensation, with many dying in their 50s or 60s.
Kicking bits of loose coal from the walls as we talk, Devin tells me that he’s struck by how the people from Lynch are still fiercely proud of what their town achieved. “It’s so sad that it’s forgotten the way it is,” he adds. “And for me, to be in a position to tell that story, it’s awesome.”
I assume Nick and Devin are teasing when they tell me about mysterious goings-on, and warn me that “someone” may pull my hair as we pass through the mine, but they’re serious – this is a place of myths and spirits, where the ghosts of the mine haven’t quite made their peace with how things have turned out.
The mine has been open to visitors since 2009 and despite various setbacks, including Covid, rockslides, flooding and technical issues (like the one Portal 31 was suffering that day) it’s become a popular attraction. I’m assured that tours are often fully booked in the summer.
Nick says: “A lot of people think it’s a dirty, poor man’s job mining coal. But this [industry] powered two world wars and helped build several cities; it put up Skyscrapers and fuelled industry. These men did a lot.”
He waves me off and I head out of town to Kingdom Come State Park (named after the John Fox Jr novel about an orphaned shepherd). This is home to the Shepherd’s Trail, which twists and turns for 38 miles up the mountain. I start to drive up, but pull over before I reach the top – the road narrows to just gravel and my rental Mazda starts to groan a little (I was warned that I should probably take a 4×4). Up here, the views are breathtaking. Black bears are thriving in this region where sweeping mountain vistas are dotted with ragged bare rock faces, and the little trails wind through woodland and around lakes.
In this corner of Kentucky, I’m a long way from the bright lights of New York, the sunshine-baked streets of LA and Florida’s shiny theme parks – it’s an America we don’t usually see. It can be an ugly one, with hostile politics, ravaged small towns and ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ flags brandished on crumbling porches.
But the staff at Benham Inn and Luigi’s are wrong. There is something here, and it is something worth seeing – both for the natural wonder, and for a forgotten story that tells us so much about America’s past and present.
As I’d bid farewell to Nick at Portal 31, he’d reflected:” It’s amazing when you think about it, these men from eastern Kentucky really did change the world by mining coal. What they created shouldn’t be forgotten.
“People need to know what these guys did and what they went through. Theirs is a story that needs to be told.”
Sycamore Gap suspects ‘feared becoming public enemy number one’
Two friends accused of cutting down the Sycamore Gap tree thought it would be “a bit of a laugh” and failed to foresee the public outrage, a jury heard on Wednesday.
Daniel Graham and Adam Carruthers then both refused to admit chopping down the tree in fear of becoming “public enemy number one”, prosecutor Andrew Wright KC told Newcastle Crown Court on the sixth day of the trial.
The famous tree had been located in a sloping dip of Hadrian’s Wall for around 150 years, before it was felled in the early hours of 28 September 2023.
Graham, 39, from Carlisle, and Carruthers, 32, of Wigton in Cumbria, both deny two counts of criminal damage to the sycamore and the Roman Wall, which the tree fell struck when coming down.
They are accused of driving overnight from Cumbria to the landmark in Northumberland, where one of them cut the tree with a chainsaw while the other filmed the act on Graham’s mobile phone.
In his closing speech to jurors, prosecutor Richard Wright KC explained how the tree felling was met with outrage.
“From Felixstowe to Falkirk, from Bishop Auckland to Barnstable, up and down the country and across the world, the reaction of all right thinking people to the senseless felling of the Sycamore Gap tree has been one of sadness and anger,” he said.
“Who would do such a thing? Why would anyone do such a thing? Take something beautiful and destroy it for no good reason.
“Go to the trouble of causing irreparable and senseless damage to an adornment to the rural landscape of Northumberland, and in the process damage the ancient structure of Hadrian’s wall.”
He added: “For all that they [Graham and Carruthers] must have thought that this was going to be a bit of a laugh, they woke up the morning after and soon realised – as the news media rolled in, as the outrage of the public became clear… it must have dawned on them that they couldn’t see anyone else smiling in there.
“And that far from being the big men they thought they were, everyone else thought that they were rather pathetic. Owning up to this arboreal equivalent of mindless thuggery would make them public enemy number one. And neither of them has got the courage to do that.”
Jurors heard earlier in the trial that Graham’s phone and Range Rover had been traced to the Sycamore Gap area. Graham claimed he was at home at the time of the offence, and his co-accused took both.
On Graham’s phone, the jury heard, was a video which the prosecution suggested showed the Sycamore Gap tree coming down. Also on the device was a picture prosecutors say showed a wedge of wood taken as “trophy” in Graham’s car boot.
Carruthers also denies any involvement. He claimed to have been at home with his partner and newborn baby on the night of the felling.
Earlier on Wednesday, Mrs Justice Lambert told the jury to consider the case “calmly and dispassionately”. Setting out her legal directions, she said it was jurors’ duty to focus solely on the evidence put forward in the trial.
The trial continues.
Bucket-list beaches: Crystalline waters and secret shores in Dalmatia
Dalmatia’s coastline is, quite simply, spectacular. With the lion’s share of Croatia’s 1,200-plus islands, islets and reefs, Dalmatia’s stretch of the Adriatic has some of the country’s most beautiful beaches and seascapes. Whether you’re on the mainland coast or island hopping, you’ll be wowed by towering cliffs that hover over sheltered, pine-fringed coves, and broad sweeps of beaches
The sheer variety of swimming spots means there’s something for everyone; families in search of long stretches of beach with watersports, vibing beach bars and all the facilities to romantics looking for secluded pebbly coves to revel in tranquillity.
If Croatia’s beaches weren’t appealing enough, the coastal waters have just been crowned the cleanest in Europe, beating holiday hotspots including Greece, Spain and Italy to be ranked number one. The European Environment Agency checked out more than 22,000 beaches throughout the European Union, and Croatia’s coastal waters came out on top. In fact, out of nearly 900 Croatian beaches tested, over 99 per cent got the highest rating of ‘excellent’, owing to low industrial pollution, minimal over-construction and a lack of mass commercialisation.
So, beyond being picture-postcard idylls, Dalmatia’s beaches should be your top choice for a relaxed, sustainable holiday in a protected natural environment. To get you started, here’s a selection of Dalmatia’s unmissable beaches.
A popular inclusion in ‘world’s best beach’ lists, Zlatni Rat (pictured above) – also known as Golden Horn – is a curvy, V-shaped beach of fine white pebbles flanked by vivid turquoise waters on the southern coast of the island of Brač. Watch the windsurfers in action as you bask in the sun, or take respite at one of the wood-shaded beach bars. Follow the coastal footpath to the seafront promenade of the much-loved village of Bol – and as it’s only a 20-minute walk to Zlatni Rat, this makes the perfect base for your stay.
For a more laid-back vibe and beautifully calm sea, just a few miles west of Bol is the blissful Murvica. Find a shady spot under the pines to flop after your swim and snorkel in crystal clear waters, or take in vistas of Vidova Gora, the highest peak on the island. There’s a delightfully rustic beach bar where you can grab a cold drink and a bite to eat, and while you’ll have to bring your own parasols, you can reach the beach easily from the carpark.
Punta Rata’s Blue Flag beach is used to vying for the title of Europe’s top beach, and once you set foot on its long expanse of pebbles, it’s clear why. This breathtaking idyll, north of the Makarska Riviera town of Brela, appears to go on forever – fringed with pine trees and surrounded by waters that offer fabulous snorkelling. Look out for the Brela Stone, a giant rock that rises from the sea and is found on many local postcards.
It takes a bit of effort to reach award-winning Stiniva Bay on the southern coast of Vis island, but it’s 100 per cent worth it. Take the rocky footpath downhill to this glittering bay sheltered by two curving cliffs that almost close the cove off from the sea, with only the smallest boats able to squeeze through the gap. There’s just enough room for a beachside café, with its terrace offering superb views.
Heading to the northeastern coast of Vis, and easier to access than Stiniva Bay, you’ll find scenic Stončica Beach. Its sparkling blue waters and mix of white sand and pebble beach, shaded by woods, make this truly picture perfect. The shallow waters, with a very gradual slope, are perfect for children. Stop for lunch on the covered terrace of the waterside restaurant and feast on freshly grilled fish and meat.
Tucked away on Hvar island’s southern coast is the unassuming Dubovica beach – surrounded by tumbling slopes covered in maquis and olive trees. In contrast to the sophisticated beach clubs of Hvar Town, this tiny coastal treat, set in a cove beside a 17th-century church, is perfect for relaxing, while the turquoise waters are made for sea safaris. Refresh and refuel at the beach restaurant or bar.
Back on the mainland on the Makarska Riviera, Velika Duba is a peaceful, pebbly bay backed by fragrant pines and connected to the village of Blato via a pleasantly shaded footpath. It’s all about simple pleasures here: swimming in gin-clear waters, lazing in the sun, doing a bit of snorkelling, having a cold drink in the beachside bar and falling under the spell of a Dalmatian sunset.
For more travel inspiration, information and to plan your trip visit Central Dalmatia
Has national pride made us forget what war is really about?
Philip Jarman is a 101-year-old Second World War veteran, but he has little truck with the “celebratory” clamour that accompanies our numerous wartime anniversaries: the bunting, the obligatory fly past, the royal gloss. Eighty years ago, he was still fighting a brutal war in Burma, and his reticence goes beyond mere end dates. “We’ve got war all wrong,” he insists, disconsolately chasing crumbs around his plate. “After 1945, we didn’t have these repeated celebrations. We got on with building back Britain. In the years following VE Day, we were in no mood to celebrate.”
The outpouring of joy on that one May day in 1945 – according to Ruth Bourne, a 98-year-old Bletchley Park veteran, “a feeling that was almost electric” – speaks to the grinding toil of war directly preceding it, a painstaking slog through privation and pain.
In the words of one former female soldier, “wartime Britain was dull and difficult, spiked with occasional horrible bits of news”.
The country had earned its celebration on 8 May, but the euphoria was not protracted. News archive confirms that the 1950s, Sixties and Seventies slid by with minimal pomp and ceremonial recall – Britain was too busy facing down problems in a post-imperial world to get excited about a war which ended with two new superpowers calling the shots.
Even the fallen had to make do with scaled-down memorialisation. Jarman explains: “We’d been badly bombed. And we knew war monuments did not work.”
After the First World War, Britain had witnessed an unprecedented public art campaign; in a country scorched by the loss of nearly one million young men, memorials, cenotaphs, and monuments sprang up in market squares and city centres nationwide, but they had not stopped a second war.
“Let’s have no more stone crosses or war memorials in the 1918 sense of the word,” insisted one disconsolate soldier. In a country desperate to crack on with the peace after five-and-a-half long years of fighting, the Second World War’s 380,000 military casualties were bunched up on pre-existing war memorials. Only outstanding services like the Commandos enjoyed their own iteration in stone.
The real sea change in Second World War commemoration came in the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher, when a full-scale war in the Falkland Islands and an upscaling of the conflict in Northern Ireland ushered in a new era of jingoism and dewy-eyed pride.
Britain needed to remind itself, and the world, of our unequivocal fight for freedom in the 1940s, positing good versus evil in the context of British military encounters. Four decades after the end of the conflict, the nation doubled down on an outstanding victory narrative as, one by one, our great wartime leaders – Churchill, Alanbrooke, Montgomery – died, making way for an elderly rank and file to have their moment in the sun.
By the 1980s, crucial distance had been established; where once the Second World War’s death toll had been dwarfed by the First, now in the modern era, few could believe the scale of the devastation and havoc wreaked by a conflict that quickly became a cornerstone of our national identity. Lest we forget, our entire nation bent its neck to an all-consuming war effort in the name of King and Country.
The record-breaking Overlord Embroidery was given its own museum and the gallant efforts of men who risked life and limb on D-Day and beyond were re-remembered. In 1984, the IRA detonated a bomb in Brighton’s Grand Hotel during the Conservative Party Conference. Thatcher emerged from the rubble to channel her inner Churchill and face down her attackers. “The government will not weaken. This nation will meet that challenge. Democracy will prevail.” The martial prime minister had already learnt the value of binary language and military prowess.
Since then, another 40 years have passed and remembering has gathered pace. Commemoration in stone and marble reveres the legions who fought from our former colonies, the millions of women who played their part, and even the animals and children caught up in the mindless wreckage. We live in a modern era when being seen is all-important and living a long life is taken for granted.
Philip Robinson, 99, was balloted (compelled) to serve underground, mining coal as a “bevin boy”. The absence of a uniform, and later a memorial, burned deep; when finally four Kilkenny stones in the National Memorial Arboretum arrived to honour the bevin boys’ war in 2013, he was delighted. But others, like Philip Jarman, are still equivocal about the role of commemoration. He is one of the few remaining survivors from the Second World War; today returning to memories of a war that killed his brother, his sister-in-law and his best friend, is challenging. And he insists we get the tone all wrong.
Reluctantly, Jarman tells me the story of Richard Combes, his childhood friend who joined the navy in 1939: “I was looking forward to him coming home on leave. But his father said, ‘I’m afraid you’ll not be seeing Richard this weekend’. I joked, ‘Has he been confined to barracks?’ Mr Coombes’ retort was quietly devastating. ‘He was on HMS Hood.’
“That shook me so much that, although his parents lived nearby, I couldn’t bear to go and see them for six months. He was their only child.” The quiet parlour, the ticking clock, the terrible pain, the accountant and his wife without their precious boy. Jarman never went back. “Oh dear,” he says, “you’ve made me dredge it all up.”
The Bismarck’s sinking of HMS Hood, the largest battleship of its kind, in May 1941 was felt nationwide. The aft magazine exploded and the ship sank within minutes. From a 1,418-strong crew, there were three survivors. Silently, I wonder how Mr and Ms Combes marked VE Day. Jarman concedes it might be touching after all this time to find his friend’s name on a monument; Combes R. A. L. etched in perpetuity, so I plan a trip to the famous Portsmouth Naval Memorial. Apparently, Richard was listed there when they adjusted the monument to make space for thousands more deaths at sea in a devastating Second World War.
I arrived in late May 2024, a week before the 80th anniversary commemorations of D-Day. The whole area had been cordoned off for the King’s arrival, so I couldn’t access the naval memorial. “How ridiculous,” said Jarman. It felt ridiculous. A buoyant sounding brass band practised on the shoreline; anticipation in Portsmouth was mounting. A high green metal wall blocked my way to the giant obelisk, and two security guards refused me access. They offered to take a picture of Richard’s name instead. One shrugged apologetically. “It’s all a bit celebratory, isn’t it? Like we’ve forgotten what war is about.”
I nodded, and felt strangely gutted. An engraved name isn’t much, but it is better than nothing. The Commonwealth Graves Commission insist that the memorial is “accessible at all times”. I can confirm this is not true.
Eighty years after the D-Day landings, it felt like commemoration had been sidestepped for celebration on an epic scale. I watched the ceremony on TV a week later and wondered if perhaps Jarman had a point. Has confected national pride and triumphalism engulfed our recall of what war is really all about?
Likewise, 80 years after VE Day, it is worth being mindful of what “victory” meant. Yes, 8 May 1945 saw an extraordinary outpouring of joy: young surviving servicemen and women celebrating a free and peaceful life that now unfolded in front of them, but what of the impact of war not caught on the cameras, beyond the bombed-out houses, hidden in empty bedrooms, and silent sitting rooms? An aching hole that no amount of ticker tape or jitterbugging could bring back. The real cost of war.
Tessa Dunlop’s Lest We Forget, War and Peace in 100 British Monuments is out now
Revealed: How much parents are paying to send child to school
The cost of sending a child to a state school in the UK has “significantly increased” since 2022, outstripping both inflation and earnings growth, a new report has found.
Research from the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) and the Centre for Research in Social Policy (CRSP) revealed that the minimum cost of sending a child to secondary school is now around £2,275 a year, and the cost for primary school exceeds £1,000 a year.
This represents a significant increase from 2022, when the annual cost for sending a child to secondary school was calculated to be around £1,755 and nearly £865 for a primary school child.
The report suggests several factors are contributing to the rising expenses, including the cost of food during the school day, an increased need for technology, and higher subject costs for secondary school pupils, on top of other costs like textbooks and stationery.
As parents pay hundreds of pounds more each year, the charity has called on the Government to use its forthcoming child poverty strategy to improve living standards for families.
Help with the cost of the school day – including an expansion of free school meals for children – would make a “huge difference to parents”, it added.
The findings are based on the Minimum Income Standard (MIS) research undertaken by Loughborough University’s CRSP, which set out what the public thinks is needed for a minimum socially acceptable living standard in the UK.
Researchers calculated what parents who took part in focus groups agreed was needed to meet children’s minimum educational needs.
Using wraparound childcare, learning a musical instrument or taking part in after-school clubs are not included in the calculation.
The 2024 costs represent a 16 per cent increase for parents of primary children and a 30 rise for families of secondary children compared to 2022, the report said.
The research found that the biggest increases relate to the cost of food for packed lunches and snacks for the school day, and the requirement for pupils to have access to digital devices for learning.
There has also been a marked increase in what secondary school pupils are required to have to take part in particular subjects – including supplying materials and equipment for design and technology subjects, it added.
Parents told researchers that high and rising costs can have a deep impact on a child’s experience of school.
A parent from England said her son does not always complete his homework and is “always getting detentions for missing equipment”.
Another parent from Wales said: “My children often feel that they are judged by others and feel left out as they can’t afford to take part in other activities and won’t ask for stationery items and often get behaviour points as they don’t have the equipment needed.”
Kate Anstey, head of education policy at CPAG, said: “Parents are struggling to cover household bills while also forking out for pencils and PE gear at school. And still their children get priced out of school activities.
“The government’s forthcoming child poverty strategy must improve living standards for families.
“Help with the cost of the school day – including an expansion of free school meals and cash support with uniform costs in England – would make a huge difference to parents and kids alike.
“And unless the strategy scraps the two-child limit, more and more children across the UK will see their potential – in and outside the school gates – stunted by poverty.”
Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), said: “Schools are very mindful of the need to keep costs to parents as low as possible, and offer a range of support to students from disadvantaged families including subsidised trips and enrichment activities, providing items of uniform, and purchasing digital devices.
“At the same time, schools are operating under severe budgetary pressures and are also facing a raft of rising costs, which strictly limit the help they are able to provide.
“We agree that there needs to be an expansion of the free school meals scheme, with eligibility for all families in receipt of universal credit, and we must also see a higher rate of pupil premium funding for children in persistent poverty.
“We await the outcome of the Government’s child poverty taskforce which must contain tangible action to address the unacceptable rate of child poverty in the UK.”
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of school leaders’ union NAHT, said: “Rising costs in recent years have affected families significantly and we know that things like the cost of food and lunches have increased in recent years.
“This is why the Government’s child poverty strategy is such a vital piece of work and one we are committed to supporting.”
The Government’s child poverty taskforce is due to present a strategy in spring, although the End Child Poverty Coalition has said it believes the document may not come until June.
A Department for Education (DfE) spokesperson said: “No child should face barriers to their education because of their family’s finances, which is why we are taking decisive action through our Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to put money back in parents’ pockets.
“We are capping the number of branded uniform items schools can require, so parents can get uniform for less and young people can focus on their learning – not on their clothes.
“As part of our plan for change we have also tripled investment in breakfast clubs to over £30 million, with delivery of free breakfast clubs beginning in 750 schools from the start of the summer term.”