“With the cost of living hitting family budgets, and hitting school budgets too, it is high time for a rethink on free school meals. We need a plan which provides a true leveller for all.”
Daniel Kebede, National Education Union General Secretary
By Daniel Kebede, National Education Union (NEU)
Let’s start with a simple premise: poverty limits children’s futures. It holds children back in school and cuts off their potential at the very start of their lives. Food poverty embeds issues of class inequality and social isolation in school.
If we accept all of that, then why are we falling so far short of addressing poverty in this country?
According to Child Poverty Action Group, in every class of 30 there will be 9 pupils who are living in poverty. And after fourteen years of Conservative rule, we now have hundreds of thousands more children growing up trapped in poverty.
The latest TUC analysis shows that the number of children growing up in poverty in working households increased by 44% between 2010 and 2023. That’s a jump of 900,000.
And why is it that we accept hunger? Children attending school are unable to concentrate due to hunger. Fatigue like this is not conducive to good learning. It is also demoralising for pupils.
A majority of children can take for granted a healthy, hot school dinner, but this is not an automatic entitlement for all.
The current means tested approach is failing families. For most children in England, the eligibility criteria for free school meals require them to live in a household that is in receipt of universal credit and has a total annual income (before benefits) below £7,400.
£7,400. That is astonishing.
That number is regardless of how many earners or children are in the household. Worse still, that number has not changed since it was introduced in 2018, meaning the threshold has harshened through inflation.
Even for those who meet the criteria, the onus is on families to work this out for themselves. Families, with salaries below £7,400, often face barriers of technology, language and stigma. Sometimes they are not even aware of eligibility.
The end result is that one in three children living in poverty in England are considered “too well off” to have a free school meal. An estimated further 200,000 children meet the criteria but are not getting the meals they are entitled to. As they enter the classroom each day, these children, already some of the most vulnerable, now have the added hurdle of an empty stomach.
Creating divides between children based on measures of their families’ wealth undermines the notion of a comprehensive education system. All the associated challenges – children missing out, teachers plugging gaps, families unable to get support – are a result of means testing. Ultimately, it isn’t fair.
With the cost of living hitting family budgets, and hitting school budgets too, it is high time for a rethink on free school meals. We need a plan which provides a true leveller for all.
That is why the NEU has been campaigning for Free School Meals for all primary-aged children.
It is why we support Mayor Sadiq Khan’s initiative in London since 2022 to do just that. In 2020, Scotland pledged to provide free healthy dinners for every child in primary school. In 2021, Wales promised children the same.
And why wouldn’t we support that? It makes sense for health, for education, and for a better society.
But children in the rest of England are still waiting and this makes no sense.
Don’t believe me? Then listen to teachers and support staff. In our annual State of Education survey, NEU members told us that the best solutions they would like to see from Government to properly respond to the rising levels of child poverty are things they are so far not doing. 89% called for a strengthening of rules to ensure school uniforms are affordable, 78% a dedicated technology budget to combat the digital divide, while 79% believed that free school meals for all children who attend primary schools in England and Wales would go some way towards helping.
Strikingly, this last statistic rises to 87% among members working in the areas of England with the highest levels of deprivation.
They should know.
And if you don’t want to take our word for it, then ask parents. When our No Child Left Behind campaign commissioned a poll from Survation back in February, a staggering 88% of parents and carers outside of London said they would like to see universal Free School Meals extended to all primary school children in England. Two thirds (66%) supported this ‘strongly’.
Better still, ask children. Half of the London children in Years 4-6 polled by Survation – and beneficiaries of Mayor Khan’s initiative – said that universal FSM meant they and their classmates now had better concentration during lessons. A quarter said they can now eat and be together at lunchtime.
The last government trial investigating the impact of providing universal free school meals, as opposed to means tested school meals, found that pupils on the universal scheme made four to eight weeks’ additional academic progress compared to their peers.
And it doesn’t only make educational sense. It makes economic sense too. The respected accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers concluded that for every £1 invested in universal free school meals, the economy would make back £1.71. The Government point to the need for a strong economy, but we won’t see a strong economy until we start to invest in our children.
It is a heartless Government that would choose to ignore these voices, and the clear benefits to children and their learning, from universal meals. In his most recent Autumn Statement and Spring Budget, Jeremy Hunt did next to nothing for schools.
Expanding free school meals is a no brainer. If the next Government truly believes in the wellbeing and potential of all young people, as teachers do, then they will make it happen.
- Daniel Kebede is the General Secretary of the National Education Union (NEU).
- You can follow Daniel on Twitter/X here; and follow the NEU on Facebook, Twitter/X and Instagram.
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