Universal Free School Meals for infants

The Children’s Food Campaign is delighted that the Government has committed to providing free school meals for every child in the first three years of infant school. 

Enabling children to eat healthy and sustainable food is a common sense policy that will pay for itself many times over by, for example, reducing the spiralling costs to the NHS of treating obesity and other diet-related illnesses.

This announcement is important not only for the lives of the 1.4 million children and their families who will benefit, but also because the Government has recognised and agreed with three of the core principles at the heart of our campaign on this issue:

1. The benefits of a healthy free school meal – in improving behaviour and attainment in the classroom, the health and wellbeing of children, and in improving the economies of scale for school kitchens.
2. Universality – the full benefits only occur when every child in class is eligible.  This increases take up, which benefits all children and the school, and also improves fairness by being especially valuable for children from lower income families.
3. Funding from central government – to ensure implementation nationwide

It has been a long road to achieving this success.  We have seen pilot projects under the previous government, lobbying of Michael Gove, and persuading the School Food Plan to recommend universal free school meals for primary schools.  At every step of the way we are proud that the Children’s Food Campaign and its supporters have played an important part.

But after a chance to celebrate, our attention must focus on the gaps in the announcement and the need to maintain the momentum for change.  Even from September 2014, 500,000 children aged 8 and upwards living in poverty will still not get a free school meal.  As a minimum, every child living in poverty should be eligible for a free school meal, with free school meals for all primary schoolchildren the ultimate aim. 

That is why we continue to support the Children’s Society’s Fair and Square campaign, and last week we joined with 4-in-10 and Child Poverty Action Group to launch a new campaign for free school meals for all children in London’s primary schools.  We will also continue campaigning to ensure that parents can be confident that school meals are nutritious and high quality.

The School Food Plan committed to the principle that school food standards should remain mandatory and should apply to all schools. We will work hard to ensure the new food standards, currently being drawn up and tested, are as rigorous and nutritionally and environmentally sound as possible. We will also campaign to ensure that the food served in all schools is properly monitored and that, pending legislation, pressure is kept up on all academies and free schools to meet the standards.