Children's Food Campaign delighted by continued rise in school meal uptake

Official figures released by the School Food Trust show that more children eat healthy school meals - an increase of 173,000 in the last year (2010-11), representing the third annual increase in a row.

Commenting on the figures published by the School Food Trust, Kawther Hashem of the Children’s Food Campaign said:
 
“We are delighted to see another year-on-year increase in the number of children eating healthy school meals and congratulate schools and caterers for their continued commitment to provide healthy and tasty food.”

We are however deeply concerned that many children from low income working families living below the poverty line are still not eligible for free school meals. We call upon the coalition government to ensure that its planned welfare reforms provide free school meals for all primary school children from families living in poverty.”

“The coalition government must support school meals and the current nutritional standards as a cost effective way of helping children to concentrate in the classroom and develop healthy eating habits, which will improve the nation’s health and save money for the NHS in the long term.”


ENDS

 For further information and interviews, please contact Charlie Powell or Kawther Hashem on 0203 5596 777 or Charlie@sustainweb.org / Kawther@sustainweb.org

Notes to editors:

1.  The Children's Food Campaign wants to improve children's health and well-being through better food - and food teaching - in schools, and protecting children from junk food marketing. We are coordinated by Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming, supported by over 150 national organisations and funded by the British Heart Foundation.

2. Official school meal take up figures for 2010-11 are available at: www.schoolfoodtrust.org.uk/news-events/news/more-families-choose-healthy-school-meals-despite-tightening-belts.  The School Food Trust survey shows:

• around 173,000 more children had healthy school meals last year, compared with around 100,000 additional children in 2009-10.
• more than three million children now eat a school meal every day.
• an average of 44.1 per cent of children in English primary schools and 37.6 per cent of those in secondary opted for school meals in 2010-11.
• the number of children taking both paid-for and free school meals in the 2010-11 year has increased.
• a rise of almost 5 percentage points in primary school uptake over just three years, more than compensating for the fall in take up seen after Jamie Oliver’s original campaign.

3. The White Paper “Universal Credit: welfare that works”, published on 11 November 2010, sets out the Coalition Government’s plans to introduce legislation to reform the welfare system by creating a new Universal Credit. As the introduction of Universal Credit will require new criteria to be set for free school meal eligibility, it provides an opportunity to increase the number of eligible children, including those from low income working families. More information is available at: www.dwp.gov.uk/policy/welfare-reform/legislation-and-key-documents/welfare-reform-bill-2011/