History
The development of the school meal service from in the post-war
years created a platform from which nutritional poverty affecting
children could be tackled in a systematic way. Legislation in recent
years has significantly altered this by:
- Restricting entitlement to free school meals to families on
income support and income-based jobseekers allowance, and
- Abolishing minimum nutritional standards and price controls.
The recent announcement that nutritional standards are to be reintroduced
from May 2002 is welcome.
Improving children’s nutrition
Currently, children’s diets are too high in sugar and fat and too
low in fibre, some vitamins and minerals. Children from low-income
families have particularly low intakes of folate and vitamins A
and C.
Dietary deficiencies can affect short-term health, increasing the
risk of dental problems, anaemia and obesity. In the long term,
poor diet may increase the risk of coronary heart disease, strokes
and diabetes. Some cancers are believed to relate to a low intake
of fresh fruit and vegetables.
Under-nutrition, even in its milder forms can have detrimental
effects on cognitive development, behaviour, concentration and school
performance. There is evidence from the United States that improved
nutritional content of school of school meals resulted in significant
increases in student scores on standardised tests.
Benefit levels fall short of the amount needed to maintain an adequate
living standard. Research into the impact of this shortfall on families
found that unexpected expenses were met by cutting back on food
and that reconciling quality with cost was difficult for parents.
The 1999 Local Authority Caterers Association Survey found that
22 per cent of parents rely on a school meal to provide a balanced
diet and that 60 per cent said that the school meal played a vital
role in their children’s diet.
Nutritional standards should be accompanied by measures to encourage
children in healthy eating. Most effective is a whole school
approach linking curriculum messages to a creative high quality
food service, offering a balanced diet at competitive prices.
Countries such as Britain where the teaching of food skills in
the classroom has declined, have seen a greater increase in reliance
on convenience foods and a measurable decline in the health of the
population. Nutrition and cooking skills, with an emphasis on
providing healthy meals on a low income should be reintroduced into
the curriculum.
The introduction of School Nutrition Action Groups should be encouraged.
These involve children, parents, teachers and caterers in creating
school food policies and can help promote nutrition.
Schools need to take steps to ensure that the contribution made
by nutritional standards in school meals is not undermined by vending
machines and school tuck shops. The introduction of fruit tuck
shops in some areas has been successful in encouraging healthy eating.
Such initiatives deserve further attention.
The Government has said that once budgets are delegated, schools
should not undermine the duty to provide paid meals by charging
unreasonably high prices. There must be clear guidance on what
prices are ‘reasonable’ if children are not to be excluded from
school meals by cost.
The Government has said that it is for local education authorities
and schools to decide whether they wish to provide hot food. Cold
meals are not necessarily nutritionally inferior. However, where
hot meals have been withdrawn, parents who have contacted CPAG to
express concerns. One parent said it had become even more obvious
who the free school meal children are as better off children were
bringing a packed lunch. She had therefore forfeited her right to
a free meal to provide her children with a packed lunch. While this
was hard financially, she did not feel it was fair for her children
to be stigmatised.
There is also a perception that hot food provision requires children
to sit together and to use and reinforce dining skills. The Government
should review the provision of hot meals and ensure guidelines are
set as part of the delegation of school budgets in April 2000.
Tackling low take-up
In some areas as many as 40% of school children entitled to school
meals do not take them up. Stigma, truancy and school exclusion
may be among the reasons children do not take-up free school meals.
Research into reasons for low take-up should be prioritised so
that appropriate steps can be taken to improve matters.
Extending free school meal entitlement
When family credit replaced family income supplement in 1988, entitlement
to free school meals was withdrawn and a notional compensatory amount
included in family credit. However, at such low levels of income,
there is no guarantee that the compensatory amount would be put
towards the cost of school meals rather than other basic essentials.
For families getting housing benefit and council tax benefit, the
value of the compensation is reduced by up to 85%.
Whilst the working families tax credit is more generous than family
credit, it does not lift all working families out of poverty. For
example, a couple with two children under 11 will not have sufficient
income to meet the ‘low cost but acceptable’ budget set by the Family
Budget Unit if they earn less than the current average for family
credit claimants (£129 gross per week).
The Family Budget Unit’s report provides a useful contribution
to the ‘how much is enough?’ debate. However, CPAG would like to
see the Government establish a ‘minimum income standard’ - a level
of income necessary to respect human dignity and combat social exclusion.
As Sir Donald Acheson said in his 1998 Inequalities in Health
report, sustained action is required to narrow the discrepancies
between benefit levels and the needs of families.
CPAG believes that extending free school meal entitlement to
tax credit recipients would be a significant step towards ending
child poverty. Together with moves to improve nutritional standards
and service delivery, it could form part of a strategy to improve
the diets of school children. Extending entitlement should help
reduce stigma and increase take-up.
CPAG urges the Government to consider extending free school meal
entitlement to all children of tax credit recipients. If the cost
were considered prohibitive, a (less desirable) alternative would
be to extend only to children under 11 or to adopt the formula for
passporting tax credit recipients to health benefits (ie. families
with gross incomes under £14,300 a year.)
The cost of extending free school meals to all children of tax
credit recipients is £410 million (£210 m for children under 11).
If the health benefits formula were adopted, the cost would be reduced
to £287 m for children of all ages and £147 m for children under
11.
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