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BIRMINGHAM, England (AP) – As the school bell rings, dozens of children begin filing into the canteen at Hillstone Elementary School. The offering of the day, the roast dinner, is a popular one, and many look forward to tucking into their plates of turkey slices, roasted potatoes, broccoli and gravy.
For some children in suburban Birmingham, an area of central England where many families have low incomes, it may be the only nutritious hot meal in a day.
Some students who eat sandwiches from their lunchboxes instead say they get one hot lunch a week, but would like more. “My mother says it’s a little overpriced,” one girl said last week.
In England, free school meals are provided for all children aged 4 to 7, but most parents of older children pay about 2.20 pounds ($2.70) a day for their child to have a cooked meal. It may seem like a small sum, but charities and educators say it is increasingly unaffordable For thousands of families struggling to cope with the UK’s worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation.
A hot-button issue is whether Britain’s government should spend more to feed schoolchildren as more families fall into poverty. and cannot afford the basics after paying their energy and food bills. The government said it would continue to review meal eligibility and look at other relief provided to needy families.
Inflation in the UK has hit a 41-year high of 11.1%.Mostly driven by gas and electricity costsThat’s nearly doubled from last winter amid Russia’s war in Ukraine. Prices of staples like milk, butter and pasta have also increased by around 30%.
To qualify for free school meals, families in England must receive government benefits and earn less than 7,400 pounds ($9,021) a year. It is also below the threshold in the US, Europe and other parts of the UK
The Food Foundation, the charity leading the campaign to extend the free school lunch programme, argues that income levels are too low. It estimates that 800,000 children in England live in poverty but do not qualify for free meals.
“It’s the children we’re really concerned about right now during the cost-of-living crisisBecause those families are having to make really tough choices about where to spend their money,” said Anna Taylor, the charity’s executive director.
To save cash, many parents don’t pay for school lunches and pack their kids lunches, which are often not nutritious, Taylor said.
“We’ve been hearing from teachers that kids are going to school with empty lunchboxes or stuff they’re too embarrassed to show their friends,” she added.
During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, the Food Foundation and soccer star Marcus Rashford persuaded the British government to provide free meals to children in poverty during the school holidays. Rashford, who spoke of his mother struggling to put food on the table, helped the government change its policies. which allowed 1.3 million children to claim free meals.
Taylor said many Britons are now worse off because some have never recovered from the job losses of the pandemic before being hit with massively higher bills.. A monthly survey conducted by her charity indicated that the number of families who had to skip meals or eat less because they could not afford food doubled from January to October.
“It’s an unprecedented level of food insecurity right now,” she said.
The Department for Education said the government understands the “strain” many families face and is already subsidizing the cost of living to millions of the poorest families., supports “more children and young people than ever”. It added that officials “will keep all free school meal eligibility under review.”
At Hillstone Primary, 51% of children qualify for free meals, and headteacher Jason King says many others need financial help too. Some parents even approached the school for food.
“When I started here 27 years ago, there were no food banks in the area. That was unheard of,” King said. The school recently put together food parcels for a parent who said they had no money for food. “They don’t want to eat at home. They come to us – we are not going to turn them away.
Louise Glave, a parent who volunteers at the school, said she was getting by but knew many others were struggling. She said she could not understand why the government could not find the money to provide free school meals to all primary students.
“Parents are proud, they don’t want to go, ‘I need help.’ But if dinner was free for all (school children) they wouldn’t need it,” Glave said. “They’ll get a hot meal every day, and parents don’t have to panic, thinking, ‘Oh, they got something hot? Have they eaten enough?’
The government said one-third of pupils in England receive free school meals, including all 4- to 7-year-olds and about 1.9 million older children who qualify based on family income.
England lags behind other parts of the UK, with the Welsh Government, for example, saying it will provide free school meals for all primary school pupils by 2024.
Some European countries, such as Sweden and Finland, provide free meals almost entirely during school life. Others, such as France and Germany, have different policies, including subsidies based on parents’ income.
In the US, the states decide. Federal law made meals free for all school children during the pandemic, but those benefits ended earlier this school year. The experience has fueled local efforts to make universal free school lunches permanent, with California and Maine passing bills last year.
In the UK, Taylor acknowledged that the government has little spare cash for public spending but argued that spending — estimated at 477 million pounds a year — requires long-term investment now more than ever.
“This is not a kind of ‘being nice,'” she said. “Children will wear the impact of these decisions in their bodies and in their achievements in life.”
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AP reporter Ashraf Khalil contributed from Washington.
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