Free school meals

[mutznutz]

I was just thinking. With so many Government and Council cutbacks, isn't it about time they stopped providing free school meals that cost untold millions of pounds to provide?

I mean we're already given child benefit to help with the cost of our children. Also, as long as you're feeding your child properly at home, what's wrong with providing a fairly inexpensive packed lunch if you can't afford to buy them a hot one? (not that they are particularly 'hot' nowdays)

Plus, if parents cant afford to feed their children when they go to school...how do they manage at weekends and during the 13wks holidays they get per year?

Then there are the parents who earn just above the threshold and cannot afford school meals...their kids would have a packed lunch so why not everyone?

I think we, as a nation, have to look at our priorities.
We hear a lot of whining about how people on benefits have big tellies, eat takeaway and smoke fags. It sounds like the decent solid citizens of mumsnet would like them to put fruit and vegetables and paying their bills ahead of flashy trashy luxuries. Well what about taking this attitude home and thinking about it on a national scale: let's give our children enough to eat and think about the other stuff after that.
The welfare state was a universal insurance system that was set up at at time of great austerity. People made the choice to make sure that everyone was covered for the basics. It's an insurance system - a decent honourable way of making sure that no one slips through the cracks - and applies (in paying in, in paying out) to everyone. Are we saying now, forget paying our insurance premiums while we spend the money on luxuries we want today? Isn't that the equivalent of puffing on fags and drinking cider when you don't know how the rent will be paid?

lurkeyishere I'd worry that if the free meals went, a significant number of parents would continue to find money for their own needs and concerns, and not for their children's meals. No idea where abouts you live, sorry.

Maybe you're naive [I'm sure you are not] and I'm far too old and bleak [am sure I am]

Child Poverty Action groups website has some very interesting reading on this matter.

Personally im in favour of universal free school meals. I reckon this country can afford it.
From CPAG

School meals are cost effective. Universal school meals would cost additional £1.5 billion per annum. This would see an estimated 7.4 million students benefiting from the entitlement to healthy, hot meals, [note 7] and would lift an estimated 55,000 [note 8] children out of poverty. Providing free school meals to students from families who are in receipt of either housing benefit or council tax benefit would cost an extra £58 million per year, and would ensure that an extra 220,000 students from the poorest working households can also eat well.

There would be long term financial benefits from this investment. We know that childhood poverty has its own costs, beyond the childhoods it ruins. Research by the respected Joseph Rowntree Foundation puts the cost of child poverty at £25 billion a year, with £17 billion a year that would accrue to the Exchequer directly if child poverty were eradicated [note 9].

Free school meals would have two significant long term financial impacts. Firstly, we know that child poverty ?costs? the health care system £2 billion a year [note 10]. Healthy eating can reduce the cost of health related diseases. According to the World Health Organisation, nutrition is related to five of the ten biggest causes of disease in developed countries [note 11]. While increased nutrition would not ameliorate all of these costs, given how much of these are associated with malnourishment, obesity and poor nutrition; school meals would have a substantive impact on these significant expenses.

Secondly, the increase in educational attainment would increase workplace productivity. An estimate of the impact of breakfast clubs on economic productivity, for example, places the overall lifetime benefit to the country of free breakfasts at £1,330 per pupil [note 12]. Given the added value of a hot lunch, we could expect these economic benefits to be at least on par, if not greater for lunches than breakfasts. These are big wins for the economy from free school meals over the long term.

Baroque 199 pounds /week for adult and 2 children is defined as the poverty line
after housing costs

it seems like a lot to me nearly 1000 pounds a month after housing

but I freely admit I added on the extra £

2 skint for school

i know of 3 people who when as children , the free school dinner was the only cooked food they would get that day.

They were not from the same family , and lived in a resonably decent area in glasgow.
was in late 80`s.

Im sure this still happens.

ahh - I see - I wondered what the number was

I think the sad truth is that removal of FSM would not encourage parents to 'step up to the plate' it might lead to a few more going into care? It would probably lead to a few more teachers subsidising kids from their own pocket..

I was on a course and the difference between the generational poor and the situational poor was pointed out. The situational poor and the mothers we have on MN - they are poor through circumstance beyond their control, they feed their children, take them to the library, read to them, turn up to parents evening, buy into education and generally give a shit. They have aspirations and their children have a good chance of getting an education, a job and a good future.
The generational poor don't see the benefit of education, they won't ever come off benefits, their daughters aspire to have babies so they can get their own house, their children aren't read too, their sons are at a high risk of going in and out of prison. They drink they smoke they do drugs they have a massive TV they somehow got on credit and have no hope of paying off. These are the children that it is very hard to reach, these are the children who need FSM, because they come to school hungry. I can't tell you how hard life is for some of the kids I see at school - it's about poverty, but not just about money.

I don't really know what the solution is, but taking away fsm and music and subsidised school trips isn't going to help them.

But droves, I wouldn't say that only having one cooked meal a day counts as deprivation. Loads of well-supported children who have packed lunches only get one cooked meal a day.

If they would definitely not get a cooked meal in the evening even if they didn't get school lunch then that would be deprivation, but a huge swathe of the working population do quite nicely on one cooked meal a day.

onadietcokebreak your post actully makes alot of sense Id never considered the cost of health care if the meal wasnt being provided

ok now can I start on the poor working class who only earn £10 more a week than someone on benifits who arent entitled to FSM

actually £199 a week is £862 a month

I've done enough voluntary work in my DC's school to see over and over again how hungry a lot of the kids who get FSM are. They are often the ones who come in without breakfast, never have their book bags, costumes, parents at assemblies etc... Now, you want to take away what is probably their only decent meal of the day? Can't you see that if a free meal wasn't provided, a lot of children would have nothing to eat at lunchtime.

onadietcokebreak - great info, thanks.

To put the figure of £1.53 billion a year for UNIVERSAL free school meals into context, have a look at this

from Feb 2010

"RBS in line for £1.3bn bonuses? UKFI veto will not be used to cut RBS payouts
? Talks thought to have pushed figure down from £1.6bn
? RBS argues up to £2.1bn would have been warranted"

that is ONE financial institution.

Costs of existing free school meals, assuming full take up: £358 million a year.

What's that - 30-odd footballers' salaries?
Not much, is it.

I think lurkeyishere that what should happen is that the working poor should get a better deal the rich should subsidise rather than those on benefits being targeted.

I know quite a few very wealthy pensioners getting universal benefits - I really think if the welfare state needs to be trimmed then it is these people who should lose out.

I can't see a single positive argument for getting rid of FSM.

How anyone can seriously argue that food for children is a sensible place for cuts to be made is beyond me.

sorry DILYSPRICE , i didnt word the post correctly.
What i ment to say was the school dinner was the only cooked food they got that day, sometimes they got fed at home ,some days they didnt. One girl in particular ,would go to her friends for tea a lot , because she wouldnt get a meal otherwise.

BY a cooked meal i ment anything other than breakfast cerial.

If having cerial for breakfast , not having lunch and having the same cheapest value crap for food at tea time isnt deprevation i dont know what is.

V interetsing OADCB, but like child benefit, I just don't think those of us who are comfortable enough should get school meals for free. We are lucky and can afford it and I am happy to subsidise those who can't.

can I just point out (again - that Free school meal does not always equate to "cooked meal".

I'm not a big fan of the "cooked meal" idea anyhow. How many people have a hot meal every day in the middle of a heatwave, dont' know about you, but it's cold salads and the like all the way in our house

Often it's about "balance" - my DS's school packed lunches provide a balance/healthyness (and quantity) that I know I simple couldn't replicate. (actually I think even if I had an income of £1million a year I still couldn't replicate them as I'm not imaginative enough with lunches that revolve around sandwiches and fruit )

Baroque - forgive me if my post seemed to implying those on benefits - I didnt mean it like that at all.

If anything I meant that the working poor should also receive FSM as well. People with families going to work but spending lots on travel costs are worse off than those who are unemployed, therefore family income should be taken into account a bit more. FSM for every child who's family income is under £16K now matter how it is made up???

People who work and struggle to get by and are not eligible for benefits are suffering from an erosion in real terms of their salaries, as accommodation costs (in particular) are completely out of control.

Transport costs are shocking, too - an unavoidable cost of working for most.

Then there is childcare.

Free school meals for some other child are not what is making life hard for you.

I am soooooo fed up of falling into the 'just earns too much' gap. We have recently been well out of it, and it has been so nice. To see blue sky between the bills and the bank account.

We are shortly to plunge back into it, and I know it will hurt. It's when you catch yourself thinking 'I can't afford to work, I'd be happier at home, a little poorer, but at home with my babies and getting help with dinners and prescriptions etc tec'. That is really depressing.

In reality it isn't true and it isn't realistic, but it feels like that.

DilysPrice On the face of it that one cooked meal a day thing sounds mad, but maybe it is a taken as an easy measure? I dunno, but the reality is deeper and more complex and therefore massively hard to measure for information gathering purposes.
I think the difference is that in a nuturing and well provided home, a child can say they are hungry and be responded too. They will also probably get a decent breakfast and snacks. They may only get one hot meal a day, but their other meals will be plentiful and healthy. In more..er...challenging families you might get fed or you might not. School can be relied on.

The health and financial implications are real, and so are the effects this has on real live people. To be hungry, and know that your family, school, carers, society are unable/unwiling/uninterested is a bloody jagged pill to swallow at 6. That has to set you up for some pretty negative thought processes.

Glad it was useful.

Im going to have a little rant now and then Im going to get on a do my assignment so I pass my first year Social Work degree.

My best friend was poor. Her dad didnt give her Mum any money and I regularly recall her being hungry at school. We still cant talk about it now without one of us getting upset - I have a tear in my eye now. The teachers knew and and she was always first in line for seconds or thirds. She had alot of time off school which would have been more frequent had she not got the nourishment of school dinners.

I wish situations like this were consigned to the past but they arent. They still occur for a number of factors. Most are just trying to cope with their situational constraints. Lack of affordable housing, financial dependancy on a abusive partner, seasonal employment, debt. The Feckless underclass that Murray suggested are in the minority.

We are supposed to be a civilised society. Should the children suffer a situation they have no control over?

Apologies for typos and general lack of care

Last year i worked in high school and there was a roaring trade in the free school dinner disc. The kids who were entitled would sell them for half what they were worth in food terms or most swap them for fags. A large amount of kids that probably needed the decent dinner the most were flogging them so they werent eating either.

At my school they were worth £2.05 and you would be able to get a dinner and pudding, but it didnt cover a drink. A couple of the kids we knew had poor home lives and no free dinners we gave them free dinners anyway. I will never be a rich school cook lol.

i wrote cooked meal , but assumed that everyone else would take that as adequte meal that contained reasonable amount of calories and nutrients.