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Save Durham, Newham and Wolverhampton to pilot free school meals
28 July 2009
More primary school children in Durham, Newham and Wolverhampton will benefit from a free healthy school lunch, following an announcement by Secretary of State for Children, Ed Balls and Health Secretary, Alan Johnson.
Durham and Newham will provide universal Free School Meals (FSMs) to all primary school children and Wolverhampton will pilot an extension of the current eligibility criteria. The pilots will run for two years from September 2009. We will be testing each pilot against a control group where the current rules for eligibility for FSMs apply to inform the full evaluation.
The pilots are joint funded with a total of £20 million from Department for Children, Schools and Families and the Department of Health and this money is being matched by the successful local authorities.
Local authorities in deprived areas were invited to bid to take part in a two year pilot which will look at the health benefits of free school meals.
It will investigate whether free school meals:
- reduce obesity and have an impact on a child's BMI
- change eating habits at home
- impact on behaviour and academic performance at school
- improve school standards
- improve general health and well being
Ed Balls will also be writing next week to all Headteachers, Chairs of Governing Bodies, local authority Lead members and Directors of Children’s Services to encourage all schools and local authorities to continue to promote healthy school lunches to their pupils. He will remind schools of the range of steps that they can take which have been shown to have a significant and positive impact on school lunch take-up:
- Establishing kitchens in all schools to prepare fresh food
- Ensuring that dining facilities are welcoming and queuing is minimised
- Putting food at the heart of the school day and building it into the curriculum
- Adopting packed lunch policies
- Ensuring that the school food workforce, including lunchtime supervisors and business managers as well as cooks, have the skills they need to run a successful school meals service
School FEAST training centres have been established across England to offer a range of tailor-made cooking, management, procurement and marketing training opportunities to meet the needs of organisations and individuals.
For further information please read the full press release.
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Last updated on 28/07/2009
