Reading JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy is a humbling experience. His beautiful memoir of a crushingly challenging upbringing and the aftermath of fraught family connections rang a few bells, and brought me back to thinking of the lives of the children I teach.

Returning to school after the Christmas break, I was reminded that there are those in my classroom who will not have had the same happy holiday as everyone else.

There are those who, while being asked to raise money and bring in donations for the local food bank, will have had to turn to that very food bank for Christmas dinner.

Vance’s thesis is that poverty is generational. He grew up in communities where having a job was rare and barely surviving was normal. His parents - and their parents and their parents - were mired in a system which, they were convinced, was not for them; a system that lies when it says that hard work pays off in the long run; where grandparents worked themselves to death just to keep afloat; and aspiration was survival - avoiding homelessness and starvation.

There is an endemic perception that education is for others: the poor don’t go to university; you certainly don’t see many lawyers and doctors coming from poor backgrounds

It is no wonder that the poverty gap is widening, while showing no sign of the trend reversing. Throwing money and resources at the problem will fix nothing.

There is also an endemic perception that education is for others: the poor don’t go to university; you certainly don’t see many lawyers and doctors coming from poor backgrounds.

There are few role models to change that, no heroes returning to transform their community. Perhaps that’s an area worthy of focus. If we are to convince those in poverty that education truly can be transformative, then wouldn’t it be good if we showed them that, too? Perhaps ensure they visit a university at a younger age than 16; match them with a mentor for a term to discuss the life of a uni student and the possibilities that could be open to them.

To what should be our great shame, some children, having lived their lives in poverty, begin school already behind their peers in so many ways. Our system often fails to overcome those barriers and these kids leave school 12 years later, still behind their peers, but with deep-rooted resentment of a system that has failed them.

Oh yes, we comfort ourselves by creating qualifications for them, so that we can repeat, year after year, “at least she’ll leave school with something” - a line that should shame us.

Vance overcame horrific odds to reach university and succeed. There were significant adults who consistently told him and reminded him that aspiration was transformational; who never lowered the bar, but raised it and helped him get there. If education is to be for all, then let it be for all - for all time.

Kenny Pieper is an English teacher in a school in Scotland