Free School Meals Campaign
Hull’s success ignored by Scottish Executive
by Felicity Garvie
When the Scottish Socialist Party tried to get our first Free School Meals
Bill through Parliament four years ago, the bill’s opponents complained
that making healthy meals free would not encourage school pupils take them.
We had to look as far a field as Scandinavia for evidence to the contrary,
where in Finland and Sweden uptake rates of free school meals were over 90
per cent and 85 per cent respectively.
In 2004 we brought the headteacher of a Finnish school to Glasgow for the launch
of Frances Curran’s new bill to promote free, healthy dinners for primary
schools.
When she was asked why her government decided to make meals free for school
children, the question left her bamboozled! To her it was just obvious - if
school meals are free for all, everyone takes them.
Now, with Frances’ bill entering parliament this week, the evidence that
free school meals do work comes from somewhere much closer to home. Hull, in
fact.
There, a progressive, Labour-majority council decided to provide healthy meals
free in all primary schools, initially, for three years. Their main motivation
was the recognition that poor diet was seriously reducing their children’s
life expectancy, their attainment in school and their chances of getting a
good job in adult life.
Statistics showed that a child born in Kingston-upon-Hull was likely to live
12 years less than one born in affluent Kingston-upon-Thames near London. The
councillors decided they had to take action.
In November 2003 they phased in healthy meals in all their primary schools.
At first, the kids turned their noses up at the new dinners and uptake dropped
drastically, from 45 per cent to 36 per cent.
But when the dinners were made free in April 2004, uptake recovered. Two years
later, it has doubled, with 64 per cent of pupils taking their free, healthy
school dinner. In some primaries, where teachers have actively bought into
the council’s ‘Eat Well, Do Well’ programme, 98 per cent
of kids eat the meals .
Make no mistake, Hull is proving that this policy works. Basically, it moves
the choice of what to eat at lunchtime from children, and restores it to the
local authority, allowing them to ensure that the kids are eating healthily.
Choice isn’t really choice if we’re expecting young children to
decide between healthy and junk food, when they’re the targets of relentless,
aggressive advertising, peer pressure and they’re just not used to eating
vegetables.
It also removes the onus on parents to provide a packed lunch, most of which,
Jamie Oliver recently showed, are less than nutritionally balanced. And it
relieves hard-pressed parents of the need to give their children dinner money,
which takes up a substantial chunk o flow-waged families’ income.
This is a major success story in the fight to combat our children’s horrendously
poor diets. It was done by Labour (yes, you read that right!) councillors with
vision and the courage of their convictions. It is supported in England by
no less than 72 Labour MPs.
So why is the Scottish Executive steadfastly ignoring Hull’s shining
example? Could it be because the exact same policy carried out by their comrades
in Hull is being championed by the Scottish Socialist Party? The Executive
even has a new bill out which does everything except make school dinners free
- that is specifically excluded.
It’s time to get up close and personal with your Labour MSP. Get a few
parents together with their kids and arrange to speak to your MSP about school
meals. Ask them if they’re aware of Hull’s success and if they’re
not, wise them up.
Tell them that their vote next year depends on whether they are prepared to
support Frances’ bill.
And if they’re not, let them know you will be telling your community
about your little chat.