Replacing free school meals

Today the government is launching a national voucher scheme for children eligible for free school meals, ensuring that no child goes hungry as a result of our measures to tackle the Coronavirus.
  • As part of our action to slow the spread of the Coronavirus and save lives, we have instructed all schools to close except for vulnerable children and those of vital workers – but we want to make sure that other children are not adversely affected because of this.
  • That is why the Government is supporting the 1.3 million children who would normally receive benefits-related free schools meals. Schools can continue to provide meals for collection or delivery, or if they are unable to do so they will be able to provide families with vouchers worth £15. They can be redeemed online via a code, or sent to families directly as a gift card and used at supermarkets across the country.
  • This will ensure that every child can continue to access healthy and nutritious food during this difficult time

Comments

Jim said…
what happens at the end of this, with the general consensus being that schools wont be back to normal till after the summer, will the school children have to repeat this school year? Parents are not teachers, and whilst they are doing what they can with the worksheets provided, it cant be to the quality of fully trained teachers, often with many many years experience.

If the repeated year is to be done, then there will need to be resourses in place for a "double sized" school year as year 1 repeat year 1 and the nursery children begin year 1.
Chris Whiteside said…
that's a very good question, Jim, and you are absolutely right that it will have to be addressed.

I don't know the answer yet, and I don't think anyone else does yet either, but you do well to raise it and if this goes on long enough the possibility of schools having to effectively repeat all or part of this year will have to be looked at with resources reconfigured as one year is effectively missing and the next one doubled.

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