In early 2014, Scottish Government announced that by January 2015, all children in Primary 1, 2 and 3 in Scotland will be entitled to a healthy and free school lunch and with a commitment of £55 million- £13 million in 2014-2015 and £42 million in 2015-2016- to help this policy become reality. Local authorities will begin rolling out their free school meals programmes from January 5th, 2015. In this blog post we hear from John Dickie, Director of Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) in Scotland about how important the expansion of free school meals will be to families living in poverty.
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John Dickie, Director of Child Poverty Action Group in Scotland
The introduction of free school meals for all pupils in Scotland’s P1 to P3 classes is a great boost for children and families at a time when household budgets are under huge pressure, but with increasing numbers of children being pushed into poverty, it is particularly welcome for those on low incomes.
When means tested free school meals are already available some people will inevitably question this important investment in our children. But the reality is that too many children living in poverty currently don’t get a free school meal – either because their parents are earning just over the means test threshold or they don’t take up their entitlement due to stigma, bureaucracy or peer pressures. Parents are left struggling to meet the extra costs of lunches as they move back into work or increase their hours when their children start school. Providing a healthy free school lunch to all pupils, as will now be the case for children in those crucial early years of primary, is the most effective way of ensuring children all our children, including the majority of poor children who live in working families, get a healthy meal in the middle of the school day.
The new approach will not just put money back into the pockets of hard pressed parents (up to £19 a week for a family with two children in the first three years of school), it will ensure all our children get the educational and health benefits of a nutritious lunch in the middle of the school day. Pilot schemes have shown that a universal approach not only increases take up of healthy lunches overall , it increases take-up amongst children already entitled – by up to 8.5 percentage points, and impacts ‘positively on the home environment of pupils’.
Perhaps most importantly, the universal approach improves children’s learning experience. With the attainment gap between better off children and their more disadvantaged peers remaining stubbornly wide the educational benefits of a universal approach to healthy school meals on educational outcomes are clear. Evaluation of a free school meals pilot for primary school children in Hull found a “significant impact in all areas of children’s schooling…behaviour, social relationships, health and learning” whilst more recent evaluation of the provision of free school meals to all primary pupils in Durham and Newham found that it was only by offering free school meals to all pupils that attainment levels were increased.
That all children in the early years of primary school will now reap the benefits of universal free school lunches is a very welcome start to the New Year, both for them and their parents.
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