Tories abandon manifesto pledge for free school breakfasts

[noblegiraffe]

Not a surprise, but the announcement was slipped out quietly:

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/conservatives-manifesto-general-election-2017-free-school-breakfasts-lunch-a7861836.html

Given that they were only going to cost 7p each, that's probably not a bad thing.

[2014newme]

It was in place of free dinners for ks1 which are no longer being abolished

[mrz]

They claimed it wasn't a replacement for free school meals just universal free meals for infants.

[JoNapot]

It wasn't a well thought out plan tbh.

[mrz]

A stupid plan if they weren't willing to adequately fund

[prh47bridge]

A stupid plan if they weren't willing to adequately fund

The idea was to abolish universal free school meals for infants and provide free breakfasts for all primary school children. According to the manifesto this was going to save money which would go into the core schools budget. I presume the calculation was that providing breakfasts is a lot cheaper than providing lunches.

[noblegiraffe]

They miscalculated in that they forgot that the breakfasts would need to be provided by staff that schools don't routinely have and would find difficult to hire.

They also appear to have based their calculations on the expectation that only a minority of children would actually take up the breakfasts. They were trumpeting free breakfasts for all while actually not expecting to provide free breakfasts for very many.