Worried school chiefs plan on purchasing jumpers for poorer kids to keep them warm this winter as struggling homes brace themselves for rocketing bills.

Officials at a group of Kent academies are scrambling to come up with a plan to tackle the energy crisis which saw the price cap hiked to £3,549 on Friday.

Last night schools chief Steve Chalke – who runs the Oasis Academies chain with schools in Medway and Sheppey – said headteachers are contingency planning for the impact a squeeze on living standards was likely to have on schools and its pupils.

This includes dialing down the thermostat and drawing up proposals to buy jumpers to help keep disadvantaged kids warm in class, The Sun reports.

Mr Chalke said: “Whatever happens, we have got to keep the heating on in schools. We can’t allow students to freeze.

“We may be able to turn it down by a degree or two and ask everybody to wear jumpers."

“Schools may ask children to bring jumpers in, but we have a lot of students from poor socio-economic groups. So we will have to provide the jumpers.”

He added that Trust was also braced for a surge in pupils heading to school breakfast clubs as the biggest squeeze in living standards in nearly 50 years takes hold.

The stark warning comes as the Treasury draws up proposals to send hard-pressed families cheques in the post to ease the cost of living crisis.

The Government has been called on to do more having already committed packages that will discount energy bills from October.

It comes after Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi warned that millions of British households are going to struggle to keep up with soaring living costs.

Industry regulator Ofgem warned the government it must act urgently to "match the scale of the crisis we have before us" as Britain faced the bleak picture on Friday.

The unprecedented hike means double-digit inflation is here to stay until possibly winter 2023 when bills could hit £6,600 a year.

The Chancellor refused to rule out freezing the energy cap, as France has done, insisting "nothing is off the table".