All infants in England to get free school lunches

All pupils at infant schools in England are to get free school lunches from next September, Lib Dem leader and Deputy PM Nick Clegg has announced.

The change - for children in reception, year one and year two - will save parents about £400 a year per child.

Targeting infants would ensure "every child gets the chance in life they deserve", teach healthy eating habits and boost attainment, Mr Clegg said.

But Labour said the Lib Dems could not be trusted to deliver.

Money is being provided for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to emulate the English scheme, but as education is a devolved issue, it is up to those running schools there to decide whether to spend the money on free lunches.

A Scottish government spokesman said: "We are committed to expanding this provision further and, once we see the financial implications of this announcement for Scotland, we will examine how best to deliver that expansion."

'Feeling the squeeze'
Free primary school meals for all pupils was one of the recommendations of a recent review of school food by two founders of the Leon restaurant chain for the Department for Education.

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Analysis

Sean Coughlan
BBC News education correspondent
The idea of free school meals for all pupils has been cooking away for many years.

There have been several pilot studies and researchers analysing the outcomes last year claimed that a free meal for all helped to narrow the divide in the achievement gap between rich and poor pupils.

Supporters argued that children with a regular healthy meal were more likely to be able to concentrate, get better academic results and were less likely to be obese. It's a public health approach, covering everyone for the long-term benefit.

A similar project saw free fruit being given to the infant years, with its advocates saying that the gains from this measure would be felt decades in the future.

The quality of school food has also become an issue, since Jamie Oliver exposed the dark underbelly of twizzler cuisine.

Now Nick Clegg's announcement will see free meals offered as the recipe for better results.

It concluded that packed lunches were nearly always less nutritious than a cooked meal, and that giving all children free lunches would raise academic standards.

The new policy does not ban packed lunches, but the aim is that having the hot, free option, will boost the numbers of pupils having school dinners.

Mr Clegg said: "My ambition is that every primary school pupil should be able to sit down to a hot, healthy lunch with their classmates every day.

"Millions of parents across the country are feeling the squeeze... I am determined to do all we can to help put money back in the pockets of these families.

"We will start with infant school pupils because teaching healthy habits young, and boosting attainment early, will bring the biggest benefits.

"Universal free school meals will help give every child the chance in life that they deserve, building a stronger economy and fairer society."

The move was welcomed by the National Union of Teachers, who called for it to be extended to all primary school pupils.

Children "do not stop being hungry at seven years-of-age", said general secretary Christine Blower.

Dr Hilary Emery from the National Children's Bureau said: "It's encouraging that politicians have recognised the clear link between a good diet, children's health and performance in education - which is of particular importance to low income families."

At the moment free school meals are available to all children whose parents are on benefits or earn less than £16,190 a year.

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Giving people something for nothing is rarely unpopular, even when they are paying for it through their taxes.”

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Ross Hawkins
Political correspondent
School meals: A policy served with relish
Providing them for all infants will cost an estimated £600m and comes after the previously universal child benefit was cut for those earning more than £50,000 a year.

The Lib Dems also announced that poorer college students will be entitled to free school meals - on the same basis as those studying at school sixth forms.

"The news will no doubt be welcomed by disadvantaged students and their parents at a time when family budgets are being stretched to the limit," said Martin Doel, chief executive of the Association of Colleges.

But Labour's Stephen Twigg said: "After three years of broken promises and empty words, people have come to judge the Lib Dems on what they do, not what they say.

"They talk about helping families but they will have taken up to £7bn a year of support away from children by 2015. They talk about helping with school meals after supporting the Tories in scrapping Labour's plans to extend free meals for school kids. You can't trust a word the Lib Dems say."

Marriage tax break
Asked if it was fair to provide free schools lunches for the children of all, irrespective of wealth, Mr Clegg said: "We believe that where we can find the money, even in these difficult times, we need to really invest that money in giving all children regardless of their family background the very best possible start in life."

He said the details of where the money to fund the lunches was coming from would be given in Chancellor George Osborne's autumn statement.

At a briefing ahead of the announcement the Lib Dems suggested they had got the funding for school lunches in return for allowing Conservative plans for a marriage tax break.

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Ministers are determined to make a series of gestures designed to alleviate the squeeze many families are feeling”

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Nick Robinson
Political editor
Read more from Nick
Clegg – Bye bye David, hello Ed?
The Department for Education ordered a review by restaurateurs Henry Dimbleby and John Vincent into the state of school meals in 2012 following strong criticism from TV chef Jamie Oliver, who earlier led a successful campaign to ban junk and processed food from school canteens.

Mr Oliver's campaign resulted in tight nutritional guidelines and healthy eating policies in many schools for those bringing packed lunches.

But in 2011 he claimed that standards were being eroded because academies and free schools were exempt from national nutritional guidelines.

Mr Dimbleby said he was "absolutely buzzing" following Mr Clegg's announcement.

He said: "Even those who have free school meals already benefit from this change of culture... Hopefully it will be the first step on the road to free school meals for everyone."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24132416

Blimey!  There is some compassion left in this country after all!!!! I fully agree with this as many poorer people are having to rely on food banks to feed their kids and even then due to increasing poverty what they do get might not be nutritional so one meal that provides that nutrition is better than none at all....Also the money saved for the parents could prove essential in providing much needed heat to homes with the rising fuel prices.  

Good idea?

Bad idea?

I always like the idea of tax money being used to help the people of the nation, rather than seeing it wasted on warfare and businesses.

Interesting, Must admit I'm not sure I know UKs issues well enough.

It sounds like a good idea, as someone that works in education I can say that it would greatly improve the chances of a poverty kid actually learning which is hard to do when you're hungry. But I wonder if it would be better to target the scheme to the under privileged and extend it out to an older age? That’s the way we do it here.

I must admit food supply/quality is very good in Australia so it is a bit of a non-issue.

And I honestly find the Idea of Heating as a necessity weird, yes we use heaters in winter but they are a luxury you don’t need them, in Sydney it is never so cold that you won’t be fine in a jumper, jacket and decent pair of pants. I don’t think I truly appreciated the 'fuel' costs in the UK because here we just relate fuel to cars.

Yeah, but I bet you love that A.C. ... um ... air con? Did I hear an Australian call it that once?

yeah we call it Aircon. or AC but we got that from US shows I think

but it's nice, not needed. you wont die or get sick without it
     
You can always go for a swim and fans use much less energy.
Plus excuse to eat Ice-cream  

what with all the junk they are selling the stores packed full of crap. I do not think I could trust the system feeding a kid of mine for free. But they have everyone so desperate right now, it will be a case of giving candy to a baby. Nothing is for free!

veya_victaous wrote:Interesting, Must admit I'm not sure I know UKs issues well enough.

It sounds like a good idea, as someone that works in education I can say that it would greatly improve the chances of a poverty kid actually learning which is hard to do when you're hungry. But I wonder if it would be better to target the scheme to the under privileged and extend it out to an older age? That’s the way we do it here.

I must admit food supply/quality is very good in Australia so it is a bit of a non-issue.

And I honestly find the Idea of Heating as a necessity weird, yes we use heaters in winter but they are a luxury you don’t need them, in Sydney it is never so cold that you won’t be fine in a jumper, jacket and decent pair of pants. I don’t think I truly appreciated the 'fuel' costs in the UK because here we just relate fuel to cars.

I came from a single parent family from aged ten and my brother and i were awarded free school meals from then and onwards at our comprehensive school until my mothers financial situation improved...It was very embarrassing but the hunger got over it in the 80's.

So many will be grabbing anything to keep ticking over. But as I already wrote, even the food being sold is contaminated with chemicals and gm's. So sadly I predict many more children will be suffering illnesses, poor kids have no other choice. However, the other side of this is every child will be guaranteed one meal a day for five days and because it will be available for all, there will be no stigma attached to receiving free meals. Maybe they should introduce "classes" where the children are actively involved in growing food. This would obviously teach them how to grow, when to pick and how to store the foods grown and best of all, they can eat fresh.
Funny how they introduce this with an election round the corner.

I have to say, I've eaten chemically-treated and even genetically modified food, and my only health complaints are things I inherited from my family -- hypothyroidism and a touch of asthma. Oh, and myopia and bad knees (but this stuff works wonders, I tell you).

I think you have to make sure children are adequately fed and rested if you want them to learn. Also, children who are afraid cannot learn. Food security is a worthy agenda. Of course, teaching them to garden is great and couldn't hurt a thing, but I'd like to think we've moved beyond everyone having to know how to produce their own food, because if we get to that point, civilization has taken a giant step backward. I like the idea of theoretical physicists and lawyers not knowing or caring where their food comes from because society is able to provide it with little hassle beyond learning basic nutrition.

veya_victaous wrote:yeah we call it Aircon. or AC but we got that from US shows I think

but it's nice, not needed. you wont die or get sick without it
     
You can always go for a swim and fans use much less energy.
Plus excuse to eat Ice-cream  

Dude, I heard it gets to 40C in Sydney. Tell me you're surviving that without air con.

@ben lolz
yeah I grew up with out AC. it only been common in homes for about 10-15 years

ohh and its 40C in the shade   but that is normally only a week or 2 of the year. most of summer is mid 30's

When I was a school the was not AC in classrooms (pretty much just sheds in a paddock) if it got over 45C in the room we got to go home   only happened twice  

I must admit my office does have AC and it does make life more comfortable :D 

really the killer is busy trains in summer, more of them have AC now, but the older ones are more or less just metal boxes with windows.   

@jane
GM stuff get an unfair bad wrap, Monsanto uses GM for the wrong purposes(gene marker for copyrights, etc) but some of GM stuff is good, I know our CSIRO which is gov't funded develops GM foods for Australia (make them better for our climate, higher yields etc).

The truth is there are too many people in the world to feed everyone with organic food.
Plus Globalisation of Agriculture is Reality, just like manufactoring, those they can do it effcently will end up doing it for other nations and getting stuff the don't do efficently in return (partly why Australia and China get on so well is they we have the exact opposite strengths and weaknesses so its easy to make deals that are benifical to us both)
it is quite inefficent to have everyone grow their own food, and it really isn't that cheap by the time you include effort and space required.

Persoanlly I think the problem Europe has with food secuirty is that too many of your farmers are little tradional operations. yeah they are nice and pretty and good for tourists but they cant produce anything near the yield of the huge industrial farming operations we have here. It's economies of scale (plus traditions/heritage), Your farmer with his few hectres will never warrant the investment in remote operated harvestors and other big equipment (plus he doesn't want them cause they 'always done it this way') while the Aussie farmer is now plotting his crops with satelites so that his robots know where to harvest later. we herd cattle with helicoptors because once you get that sort of size it's more efficent.


I beleive the solution is applying better technolgy to argiculture and that includes chemicals and GM (but of course we need to balance agaisnt the possible negatives) we wont produce more food by doing it the same old way, like every other industry it needs to advance to meet the needs of modern societies. BUT the root cause of the issue I suspect is still the gap between rich and poor, I am sure the UK is in general wealthy enough to make sure everyone is fed, it would just cost a few their excesive luxury.

Also keep in mind the kids of Asia used to be starving...
But now industry has moved there and Asia is profiting.
Profit comes at the expense of someone else
wealth is shifting away from Europe towards Asia,
so the social issues we probably shift too.