Eastfield headteacher reiterates need for ALL primary-aged children to get free school meals
A new report has been published
A headteacher from Eastfield is reiterating the need for ALL primary-aged children to get free school meals.
It is as a new report says nearly seven in 10 kids in England, whose families are entitled to universal credit, are not eligible.
Families on universal credit (UC) are much more likely to be food insecure than other households, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said.
Currently, households in England receiving UC must earn below £7,400 a year before benefits and after tax to qualify for free school meals.
This cap for means-tested free school meals means that around 1.7 million pupils in England whose families are entitled to UC - 69% of this group - are not eligible for free lunches, researchers said.
Nearly 30% of families claiming UC were classified as food insecure in 2021/22, six times the rate among families not claiming UC, the IFS report said.
Vicki Logan is the headteacher of Overdale Community Primary School in Eastfield near Scarborough. She said: "This is a time when they learn their social skills of eating together, the skills of eating a healthy meal provided by the kitchen and they're exposed to a wide range of food and many healthy options. Children when they're eating with their friends will often try different things because their peers are trying them.
"Pressure on families at home, especially those working and on low incomes to prepare packed lunches every day and to try and choose healthy options is quite a big request to the parent to get that ready on a morning, especially if you have three or four children, whereas if you can just send your child into school knowing they get a healthy meal then that's a stress off families.
"The cost of dinners has recently gone up and schools have managed that differently, according to their budgets which have become a challenge. Generally, they're between £2.70 and £3 a day, which across the week is just short of around £15, which doesn't seem too great until you've got three or four children and then it's just not a possibility.
"You can't expect a family on universal credit to find that kind of money every week. They just won't have it so then they'll buy cheaper options which isn't the right approach. If parents are going out to work and claiming universal credit, they deserve some additional support and some of the responsbility of the school day being taken away from them."
The research
The research, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, explores the options and trade-offs for expanding free school meals in England.
It suggests that expanding eligibility to all children whose families claim UC could cost about £1 billion a year in the longer term, a 70% increase in spending on free school meals.
Raising the income cap to £20,000 a year for families on UC would be a less expensive reform and it would bring around 900,000 children in low-income families into eligibility, the IFS said.
This would cost around £425 million a year and would mean that around two-thirds of children whose families get UC also get means-tested free school meals, according to researchers.
The report follows an announcement last month by Mayor of London Sadiq Khan of a £130 million emergency scheme to extend free school meals to every primary school pupil in the capital for one year, starting in September, in an effort to help struggling households amid the cost-of-living crisis.
The Scottish Government has committed to providing free school meals for all primary school pupils, while in Wales the rollout of universal primary free school meals began in September.
Currently in England all children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 in state schools - around 1.5 million infants - are entitled to a free lunch.
Another 1.9 million children in England are currently eligible for means-tested free school meals.
The research finds that extending free school meals to all pupils in primary state schools would cost around £1 billion a year in the longer term, similar to the cost of offering free meals to all children whose families receive UC.
Offering free school meals to all primary and secondary school pupils (up to Year 11) would cost an extra £2.5 billion a year, nearly trebling current spending, the IFS.
Report co-author Andrew McKendrick, research economist at the IFS, said: "Universalising free school meals would affect children across the income distribution and might have wider benefits for health and educational outcomes, but it would also significantly increase existing spending.
"Expanding eligibility - for example, to include more families on universal credit - would focus more of the additional spending on low-income families, but still would not directly benefit the very poorest children, who are already entitled to free lunches."
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), said: "It is shameful that so many children continue to miss out on a scheme with such proven benefits.
"As this report states, there is clear evidence that increasing the take-up of school lunches has a positive impact on living standards, nutrition and attainment that persists into adulthood.
"Providing free school meals alleviates some of the pressure on struggling families and gives children the guarantee of a healthy meal every day.
"ASCL and many other organisations have long called for free school meals to be extended to all children whose families are in receipt of universal credit.
"This is a simple, immediate step the government could take to ease the impact of the cost-of-living crisis which has made life even more difficult for many families."