Exclusive: Report to children's
charity Aberlour reveals scale of school meal debt for the first time
Children in the first five years of primary school receive universal free
meals in Scotland. Photograph:
Chris Radburn/PA
More than £1m is
owed to families across Scotland who cannot afford their children's school meals,
new research has found.
The report to
children's charity Aberlour, seen exclusively by the Guardian, reveals for the
first time the scale of school meal debt, and details the "alarming"
rise in potential hunger among Scottish pupils.
Morag Treanor,
the report's author and professor at the Institute for Social Policy, Housing
and Equality Studies at Heriot-Watt University, said the £1m figure was just
the tip of the iceberg.
A total of
£1,032,500 is mainly owed by pupils in the final years of primary school. Children in the first five years of primary school receive universal free meals in
Scotland.
Treanor said
there were "unknown levels of hidden hunger in high schools."
During the
production of the study, young people who told Aberlour that their friends who
were ineligible for free meals were starving at lunchtime, while others
deliberately saved their lunch money to pay back to their parents.
One boy
explained: "In my group of friends, I would say that about half of them
can't eat food when we go out, so you see people buying food for their
friends... We go to Greggs and, because I've got £3 or £3.50 to spend, I'll get
two yum yums and a sausage roll and I'll give them yum yums. "
Further research
highlights the stigma against high school students who come to the school
office to ask for a voucher that identifies they have no money in their school
meal accounts. In some local authorities, the issuance of vouchers is arbitrary
or may restrict the selection of available food.
Treanor also
identifies different debt recovery systems between councils, which she
describes as "a hammer to crack a particle... some local authorities refer
it to their debt recovery services when it reaches £10."
The report
highlights how income thresholds to qualify for free school meals have changed
over the past 20 years, meaning that low-income working families "have
been gradually excluded from the school-free school meal system over the years
because these thresholds have not kept up," the report said. You said.
Britain's former
children's commissioner Anne Longfield, who is chairing a year-long commission
on children's lives, called for the extension of free school
meals to all families on
universal credit.
Aberlour's report
calls for the Scottish government's commitment to the right to universal free
meals for all primary classes to be implemented immediately and the same
benefits for secondary school pupils to be implemented before the end of this
parliament. It also called on the Scottish government to raise the threshold
for free school meals to £25,190 and increase annually in line with inflation.
"This is a
big ask," said Martin Canavan, the charity's head of policy and
engagement. "The Scottish Government can do that through devolved powers.
Today, fewer families are eligible for free school meals than they were 20
years ago when these thresholds were first introduced, despite the fact that in
the last 10 years we have seen a significant increase in child poverty.
Holyrood should
consider access to food as a children's rights issue, Canavan added.
"Scotland is seeking to incorporate uncrc (THE UN Convention on the Rights
of the Child), which is an important commitment that we fully support, but we
need to recognise that the issue of school hunger and the significant number of
hungry children every day is actually a violation of children's human rights.
"Towards universal provision will be a way to ensure all children have the right to eat and be fed."
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