22nd May 2017 1:00
By Blue Tutors
Infant school lunches were introduced be the Liberal Democrats during the coalition government in 2014. The scheme gives access to free school lunches to every child in the first three years of primary school, that is to say reception, Year 1 and Year 2 with student ages between five and eight years old. Removing universal access to free school lunches goes directly again the conservatives’ 2015 manifesto promise. In contrast, labour on the other hand has pledged to extend school lunch entitlement to all primary years.
Superficially, it appears to be a sensible financial decision to replace lunches with breakfasts that are a tenth of the cost, leading to a predicted £650 million a year saving. Although there has never been any real analysis of the value of the lunch scheme, many felt it was excessively expensive from its inception, particularly in a time of such austerity within the public education sector. Yet, such a rapid U-turn will mean wasting the capital invested in upgrading kitchens, staff and catering facilities to roll out the scheme less than three years ago, which amounts to the same £650 million they are projected to save in the first year. There may also be wider ramifications, as it disincentives parents in low income families from seeking work as the additional income would then remove their eligibility for free school meals.
There is now a large body of evidence that a good meal during the school day produces direct improvements in educational outcomes. Adequate nutrition is vital to improving concentration, learning and even behaviour of students as well as having significant health benefits. In many schools, students would regularly come to school with little or no lunch, and statistics from when the scheme was first proposed in 2014 show that almost half of students (40%) not eligible for free school meals are in fact living in poverty and are therefore unlikely to have a good lunch during the school day. While the conservatives argue that breakfast would have the same benefit as lunch at lower cost, this is outside official school hours and are therefore likely to be missed by those students that need them the most.