Free school meals: Roll out delay means Falkirk pupils face wait

Previously it had been agreed that older primary school children would not have to pay for their lunch from August this year – but the Scottish Government and the Scotttish councils’ umbrella body, COSLA, have agreed this deadline would be impossible.

In Falkirk, the expansion last year – involving 3,500 primary 4 and 5 pupils – revealed the massive infrastructure challenges that were involved in the project, which had a budget of £872,000.

At Falkirk Council’s Children, Young People and Education Executive on Tuesday, members heard that the pandemic has caused procurement related delays across the council – and the supply and installation of new kitchen equipment was affected.

The roll-out so far has also meant recruiting more catering and cleaning staff and the council is keen to understand better what a further increase in the demand for meals will be to know how many more staff will be needed.

They also need to work out if they have enough room in dining rooms and calculate how much capacity they need in the various kitchens.

Head of planning and resources, Gary Greenhorn, told members of the executive that the success of the roll-out so far was due to the hard work of catering staff and cleaners working closely with teaching staff.

However, the next stage, when all the P6s and 7s come on board, requires much more work to be done to find out what level of investment is needed.

This will feed into work that is being done nationally, as COSLA works with several professional groups, including directors of education, council leaders and directors of finance who are pulling together a detailed plan.

Councillor Adanna McCue, portfolio holder for education, said: “All our Early Years children are being fed free, all our primary children up to primary 5 are getting free school meals – during a pandemic, it’s just fantastic.”

She added: “It’s right that we are taking our time to get this right because there is no point claiming we’re going to do something if we haven’t got the infrastructure in place to actually do that.”

Mr Greenhorn said that this month they would be doing a census of the free school meals which would give them useful information for the roll-out.

Councillors from across the political parties agreed that it was right that the detailed work was done before the scheme was expanded.

One of the young people on the committee, Isa Santos, asked if any consideration had been given to rolling it out to high schools, as she had spoken to many pupils who had told her they often didn’t have enough money to buy a whole meal.

Mr Greenhorn said it was an excellent point but there are currently no plans to roll the scheme out to high schools, except for pupils at special needs schools.

However, he added that pupils and any families who are struggling to pay for meals should speak to a member of school staff as help could be made available.

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