Raise threshold for Free School Meals - children in poverty going hungry

[noblegiraffe]

The cost of everything is rising, but the threshold for qualifying for free school meals has been frozen since 2018.

In 2018, if your household income after tax (but before benefits) was below £7400, your children qualified for free school meals.

In 2022, it is still £7400. If inflation had been taken into account, the threshold would be around £8575. £8575 would buy you as much now as £7400 would have bought you 4 years ago (and that isn't taking into account things like energy that have gone up in price by far more than inflation).

This means that approximately 110,000 children are missing out on free school meals that they would have qualified for if the threshold had risen with the cost of living.

I find it mad that the threshold is that low, tbh. If a household income is low enough to qualify for benefits, surely one of the priorities of the benefits system should be to ensure that the children in that household are getting at least one reasonable meal a day?

There is a campaign group that wants all families on Universal Credit to qualify for free school meals www.theguardian.com/education/2022/oct/12/want-to-boost-growth-expand-free-school-meals

But if that's a step too far, surely we could at least keep eligibility at 2018 levels and not say that households need to be even poorer than then to qualify?

www.theguardian.com/education/2022/nov/10/children-not-eligible-for-free-school-meals-going-hungry-say-teachers

@Juicesausagecake you quote 1906. In 1906 the workhouses were still open. Due to benefits there is, thank God, no need for them nowadays.

Educators need to educate about the importance of the right choices rather than adopting the Liberal everything and anything goes mentality.

When Inwas a governor of a deprived, inner London sink secondary, serving the worst SW London Estates the deputy view was that it was not possible to educate young people about the illegality of drugs or their impact because it was critical of their parents. Similarly, safe sex, consent and the importance of long term secure relationships was a no go area because these things were not a prat of their culture and it would be disrespectful.

The message was that educators should encourage drugs, multiple partners, lack of secure families, etc, all of which led to joblessness because the parents were feckless and it was wrong to teach right from wrong.

Whilst I sympathise with the children, too many teachers and social workers and general do gooders have done zilch for the futures of vulnerable children via their twisted ideologies. They have done nothing to empower those children to chose different lives.

An empty belly needs to be dealt with in the here and now, sometimes, by taking action against uncaring and negligent parents. One cannot keep throwing money at the symptom without dealing with the root cause. Sony generations have now been failed by the collapse of community.

This is very poor quality nutrition, and is likely to lead to problems such as obesity and diabetes in adulthood. I am shocked at schools providing refined white flour products daily - you are not the only poster who has mentioned it - other posters have mentioned teachers providing toast.

Not only nutritionally very undesirable, but also laying themselves and their education authorities wide open to future legal actions

Agree- it's ridiculous.

Eating a bagel for breakfast is going to lead a teenager towards adult obesity ? Better than starvation !

Lets ask the the national breakfast programme to lay on scrambled eggs and smoked salmon to accompany the bagels ffs.

It really is a long time since I have read such an unpleasantly right wing post on here - and that's a low bar. There should be no need for workhouses at all. It's a moral thing , not 'due to benefits'.

Not all hungry children have negligent parents. In fact, most don't. Material deprivation in this country is huge and real. A shocking number of children live below the poverty line. That is unacceptable in a developed country in the 21st century.

Was Marcus Rashford badly parented?

You realise the programme , which Teresa May attempted to scrap and then reintroduced (to avoid providing free lunches) is about 7p per child , right?

Refined white flour products, particularly if eaten with margarine, are one of the worst things you can possibly feed a child for a regular breakfast. This sort of food is what has lead to our current obesity crisis, and the rise in diabetes - ( which incidentally costs the country billions.....)

Our parents generation didn't realise how toxic this food was. Our generation has access to that information, so there is no excuse to be feeding it to children in this day and age

I don't see the relevance of that. This food is toxic, being cheap doesn't make it ok!

So you'd prefer we offer brown toast (which they won't eat)?

There is a rise in rickets in some parts of the UK. Rickets FFS.

The relevance IS the cost.

sorry, I don't get what you are saying

No. It isn't . It is linked to extreme restricted diet.

My point is that is you have 7 p per child white toast will be just about all that can be funded. What do you suggest?? You are being wilfully obtuse.

As a single parent I do get UC on top of my full time wage. My take home pay packet would be over £3k a month before I got no UC

Interesting. We were told as a couple that my £1000 a month rendered us 'ineligible " for UC (when DH lost his job due to cover)

How on earth can you get UC up to nearly £3k a month? Why do single parents seem to get more help than married parents?

You have to question how some people can get UC up to earning £3000 a month but someone taking home £1700 is entitled to fuck all.

Oh and according to the govt, £31k is a 'very high wage'

no, I am not being obtuse, of course there are much better things to feed children for low cost, such as proper porridge, some fruit in moderation, etc.

And yes, restricted diet could be ONE factor in some cases of rickets, but I have been a teacher for decades, rickets has risen a small amount in our city in that time, almost all in children of colour, and the overall rise of rickets in the country is closely correlated to the number of people of colour in the population, and the latitude. You can calculate the amount of rickets likely in any one area if you know the latitude and the demographics - that formula has not changed in my lifetime. The numbers have gone up because the demographic has changed.

There is a problem with child nutrition in this country. It is rarely linked to lack of money or lack of food... it is a serious problem that should be addressed seriously, not by feeding children toxic muck, and not by waving around wild assertions based on fundamental misunderstandings

Do you think schools have time to make porridge, or that most children will eat it?

How about this as a radical suggestion: fund schools properly, and hand back some of the autonomy to the heads and pastoral workers who know pretty acuratly what is needed in their school.

Never going to happen. It would mean admitting that teachers and schools know stuff.

There was no rickets in the 60s, 70s, 80s or 90s. 1/3 of cases are in white children.

It's not my fundamental misunderstanding, I assure you.

Ironically, I am also saying they need healthy diets. Which needs proper funding. Free milk would help.

ALL bread also is reinforced with vitamins and should have folic acid but - surprise - government dragging its heels.

And poorchiod nutrition is nearly ALWAYS linked to poverty.

Poor child nutrition

Married parents have more income coming in? I do know some couples who claim UC although don't know everyone' finances. Parents who rent and pay for childcare are much more likely to be entitled than those who own.

UC isn't capped at a certain income it's tapered down so you lose 55p of your entitlement for every £1 you earn above your work allowance. If your entitlement is high multiple children, childcare and rent you could easily be entitled to £2K in UC. If you're take home was £3K then your work allowance is £344 so for £2656 would reduce your entitlement by £1460.80 to £539.20. You would have to be taking home 4k in order to reduce your UC to zero; possibly as part of a couple.

The idea is you're better off working. Whilst it sounds like a lot of money you still have to pay the rent and childcare cost that generated your high entitlement in the first place. I would say it'd of been far better for the government to invest in affordable housing and childcare rather than lining the pockets of private providers. The well off people in this scenario are not the people claiming UC but the landlord who is having his mortgage paid on an appreciating asset.