Scrapping Free School Meals

[DanJARMouse]

here

From reading the article am I right in thinking they are scrapping the intended extensions to free school meals, or are those already in receipt going to lose them?!

Where I live, the local council have been issuing paperwork along the lines of "do you qualify for free school meals?" as apparently the take up here is fairly low. We qualify, and DD1 currently has school dinners, and DD2 from August will have them too, but not if I have to start to pay for them!

those on jobseekers and income support arent affected....so who is then??

Well we qualify for being on the higher rate of child tax credit (no working tax credit) with an income of less than £16k pa.

We dont claim JSA or IS as DH gets Incapacity Benefit and an Army Pension.

i see....so you'll lose the meals?

well its going to make it less tenable to employ kitchen staff if the amount of kids having the meals drops too much i would think! already,most kids in all my dc schools pay at canteen in upper school,and have packed lunches in lower or middle.....hardly anyone even has school dinners

Well this is what I cant work out!

From the wording of the article, it appears there were some plans in place to extend the free school meals provision, and i think it is that they have scrapped, Im not sure.

I would rather they just said "people earning X amount and under will get free school meals" regardless of the benefits claimed.

If I lose them, I lose them. To be honest, I would rather the kids ate a meal at lunchtime and had sandwiches for tea as its cheaper for me obviously, but if I need to cook a meal for all 5 of us (cook for 4 of us at the moment anyway, and 5 of us on weekends) then so be it. Would just rather know one way or another.

All the uncertainty over the cuts being made is worrying me, and I would rather just know exactly how my family are going to be affected.