Chamber and committees

Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills submission of 23 February 2022

PE1926/A - Expand universal free school meals for all nursery, primary and secondary school pupils

Thank you for your letter of 10 February 2022 I in relation to Petition PE1926, raised by Alison Dowling, which calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to expand universal free school meals provision for all nursery, primary and secondary school pupils.

I fully recognise that free school meals are a vital support to thousands of children and young people across the country - ensuring that they are fed and ready to engage in learning. We also fully recognise the financial benefits they provide to families across Scotland, providing savings of around £400 per child, per year.

As you will know, we have been providing funding to local authorities to offer free school lunches to all children in primaries 1 to 3 at publicly-funded schools during school term-time since January 2015. The provision of free school lunches during school term-time has now been further expanded to include all children in primaries 4 and 5 and we are committed to rolling this universal provision even further, to include all children in primary and special schools, during the lifetime of the current parliamentary session.

In the meantime, for older children in primaries 6 and 7 and young people in secondary schools, they will remain eligible to receive free school meals if their parents or carers are in receipt of any eligible qualifying benefits. This is supported by £74.6 million pounds of funding.

In 2022-23 the Scottish Government’s will provide £42.2 million to provide for all children in primaries 4 and 5 to receive free school lunches during the 2022-23 school year, this is in addition to continued funding of £53 million to provide free school lunches for all children in primaries 1 to 3.

Whilst I can fully understand why many people would like to see the full programme of expanded universal free school lunch provision put in place earlier, I would add that a commitment of this scale requires a significant delivery and financial planning and discussion with our local authority partners to ensure everything is in place to deliver a healthy and nutritious free meal to every child who wants one. It is important to understand, for instance, the current capabilities of existing school kitchens and dining settings and to identify where these may need to be upgraded or improved in order to accommodate the anticipated increase in uptake.

With this in mind, we 2022-23 will also provide £30 million in capital in 2022-23 to be invested in school kitchen and dining areas in order to prepare for this further expansion and we will continue to work with local government partners on planning over the next academic year. This will help to ensure that the expansion can be delivered equitably across all schools, in all areas, whilst maintaining high quality meal provision for pupils.

With regards to the further expansion of free school meals to include nursery-aged children and young people in secondary schools, I’m sure you will be aware that the Scottish Government’s policy of increasing funded early learning and childcare to 1,140 hours per year came into effect in August 2021.  As part of this offer, all three and four year olds and eligible two year olds are now entitled to receive a free meal on every day they attend at a funded early learning and childcare session.

With regards to universal free school meals for young people in secondary schools, at this time the Scottish Government’s primary focus is on expansion for children in primary schools. However, during the course of this parliamentary session, we are also committed to piloting approaches to universal meal provision in secondary schools.

Finally, we will keep our eligibility criteria under continual review to ensure that free school meals are available to those who need it most - plus there is a legal duty on local authorities to promote the availability of free school meals to all eligible children and young people, in every educational setting. Furthermore, local authorities also have a statutory duty to take all reasonable steps to ensure that all children and young people who are eligible for free school meals receive them.