Nutrition is an essential part of the success of any child in school. Whether it's to provide them energy for physical education or to power their brain through a mathematics test, a student can always count on nutritious food to give them a much-needed boost. Even kids from lower income families can always count on free school meals to give them the nutrition they need.
Unfortunately, a new report from the BBC suggests that some of the smallest schools in England have failed to provide these free meals due to a lack of budget. These free meals were mandated as a part of policy that was put into action back in 2014. What's worse is that even the English Department of Education has reportedly refused to publish a report, which shows that these meals were not being delivered to the much deserving student population from these small schools.
Every primary school used to receive a flat rate of £2.30 to add to their budget under the policy and an extra amount of money was even made available to smaller schools or those with less than 150 students. This should have helped schools deliver the free lunches, but the government has removed it just last year. Now, schools are struggling to deliver these hot lunches and some have just plain stopped.
"Probably around £2,000 to £2,300 per year should be provided to these small schools to make the whole provision of their school meals solvent," says restaurateur and former adviser on school food, John Vincent. "The government chose not to publish that report [on providing free meals]. And that, to me, seems strange," he adds.
Some experts believe that transferring the surplus of much larger schools to comparatively lower schools will help fix the funding problem. "If 20p were to be taken off the per-head cost at larger schools and given to the smaller schools, the funding mechanism would work," says Vincent.
