Home  Food Food Related News Parents Want Free School Meals For Alll
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Parents Want Free School Meals For Alll |
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School Food Trust welcomes Netmums report
Calls for parents to check their eligibility; 24% free school meals currently unclaimed
The School Food Trust welcomes the Netmums report on school meals, released in its newsletter to parents this week. The report shows that the majority of parents (63%) are in favour of free school meals for all, irrespective of family income. This figure is supported by independent research conducted by the School Food Trust which
found that 60% parents think all school lunches should be free to all children.
Chris Wainwright, Director of Communications, School Food Trust explains, “The Netmums report proves how important free school meals are to mums. Many believe having a healthy meal during the school day is part of a
child’s right to education. However, despite the high demand, unfortunately many free school meals still aren’t being claimed.”
“Our own research estimates that 24% of children who are entitled to Free School Meals (334,000)[i] aren’t claiming them. We would encourage all parents to check their eligibility and make sure that if their children can claim a free school meal they are doing so. As well as ensuring your child eats a varied and nutritional hot lunch every day, free school meals can take away part of the financial burden of food costs at this difficult economic time.”
Children from households with an income of less than £15,575 are entitled to free school meals. Parents can apply online via their council or pick up a form at their school. For more information visit:
http://www.schoolfoodtrust.org.uk/content.asp?Contentid=599
From the 2130 responses to the survey received by Netmums, 38% said their children had packed lunches, 31% had school meals and the remainder had a mixture of the two. 80% of respondents were either completely or moderately happy with their child's school meal arrangements.
Commenting on the report Cathy Courts, Director, Netmums, said: “Issues about the quality of school meals have been widely reported over the last few years but our research shows that parents are actually more concerned about organisation of lunch times rather than capital investment.
Giving children longer to eat lunch, improving dining conditions and better communication with parents about what and how much their children are eating are the most popular improvements that parents would like to see.
We’re calling for schools and local councils to listen to parents on this issue and focus on the organisation of lunchtimes – not just on the quality of food. ”
The full report can be found here:
http://www.netmums.com/food/The_Netmums_school_food_survey.2727/ |
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