Free school meals - a necessary entitlement
Free school meals are essential for multiple millions of children and young people living in our nations low income families.
Children need nutritious, well balanced food for their health, growth, development and overall wellbeing.
Researchers at the University of Essex’s Institute for Social and Economic Research in their published briefing further prove that free school meals (FSM) for all, pays immense dividends, in terms of not only combatting food poverty but increasing equality of access, whilst boosting health too. This includes improving obesity levels.
The research furthermore demonstrated academic improvements too, with children and young people, provided with an FSM being found to experience enhancements in their reading skills.
As the No Child Left Behind campaign powered by the National Education Union, highlights: “School dinners help children focus, connect with their peers and build bright futures. Our children learn together and play together - they should eat together too.”
Worrying is the fact that a million schoolchildren are facing being stripped of free school meals by the end of the decade as parents on legacy benefits are forced to move on to universal credit.
Making this all the more pressing is the fact that safeguards to ensure families switching to the new welfare system are not worse off as a result, will start coming to an end later this year.
Of concern also is the case of children eligible for FSM, whilst registered on school rolls but not in attendance in school for health reasons, being denied by their schools, their entitlement to free school meals.
These schools are the recipients of tax-payers funding to pay for the provision of the children’s free school meals but schools, despite being notified in advance of the children’s non-attendance, thus enabling a meal not to be prepared for them, worryingly are still refusing to provide a voucher or take away lunch for these children.
Instead families say they are pocketing the money whilst the children entitled to these free school meals go hungry. Families assert that schools provided vouchers or pack ups during Covid readily enough, so there shouldn’t be a problem now.