Even in the light of the latest rise in the proportion of children becoming eligible for free school meals, there are still hundreds of thousands of poorer children caught in the hunger trap (A quarter of state school pupils in England receiving free school meals, 6 June).
The best estimates suggest that about 200,000 eligible children are not registered to receive their free school meals. Moreover, even if full take-up was secured among those eligible, there are children whose parents work in care homes, coffee shops, clothing factories, police stations, sorting offices and schools, for example, with wages that are not high enough to lift the family out of poverty, but are deemed to be too high to qualify their children for free school meals – and the accompanying place at holiday activity and food (HAF) clubs.
Our partners in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, have stepped in to fill this gap with a number of schools, and we are doing similar in the school holidays. But this task should not be left to charities.
Three reforms would help those children break free of the hunger trap. First, a national auto-enrolment scheme, as the late Frank Field proposed with cross-party support in 2015, in which all eligible children are automatically signed up for free school meals and the Healthy Start scheme (with parents given the right to opt out). Second, an urgent review and revision of the eligibility criteria to ensure that, at the very least, no child living in poverty is disqualified. Third, an extension of the HAF programme to ensure that support continues during school holidays.
These reforms would provide year-round protection against the hunger that blights the lives of too many children in our country.
Andrew Forsey
National director, Feeding Britain
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