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Provision of School Lunches (Disapplication of the Requirement to Charge) (Scotland) Order 2008 (Draft)
Item 4 is consideration of subordinate legislation on the provision of free school lunches for children in primary 1 to primary 3. This is our first oral evidence-taking session on the order, and I am pleased to welcome from Ipsos MORI Scotland Lorraine Murray, research director, and Chris Martin, associate director. I thank them for their patience in waiting for the committee to reach this item on the agenda, and invite them to make a brief opening statement.
We welcome the opportunity to discuss our evaluation of the trial. We thought that it would be helpful to give a brief summary of the aims of our research, to clarify exactly what we were setting out to evaluate and what we were not asked to evaluate.
You indicate that uptake increased during the course of the trial. However, the uptake fluctuated in the pilot areas. Could you give the committee a little more information about those fluctuations and the differences between local authorities in that regard?
The uptake figures are based on the census data that we gathered in October, immediately before the trial started, and on the later February census data, which was gathered in the middle of pilot. We asked for information from local authorities on what the pattern was at those points because we were interested in whether, for example, uptake shot up and gradually fell away or whether it took a while to build up.
It is worth emphasising that the uptake figures are based on the proportion of pupils taking a meal on a typical school day, rather than the number of pupils taking a school meal every day. Therefore, the increase to 75 per cent might suggest that, on three out of every four days, all pupils are taking the free school meal.
Your report indicates that uptake increased more in the local authority areas in which the proportion of children who qualified for free school meals was lower. Did you do any work on why that was the case? Why was the uptake in the Borders greater than the uptake in Glasgow, where more children per head of population would benefit from a free school meal?
Uptake increased in the areas that had the lowest levels of registration and in the areas that had the lowest levels of uptake of school meals, whether free or otherwise. Areas with lower levels of uptake had greater increases in uptake and that was seen both among those pupils in the P1 to P3 group who were registered for free school meals and among those who were not.
In areas where there is a higher level of free school meal registration, the uptake tends to be higher, even among those who are not registered for free school meals. Therefore, those areas with lower levels of free school meal registration had lower levels of uptake, so there was more scope to increase uptake in those areas.
You said that one of the problems about non-uptake is that children are fussy eaters, whatever that might entail. Is there any indication that there are specific types of children from particular backgrounds who have greater difficulty with fussy eating?
No. We did not attempt to measure the fussiness of their eating. Our finding was based on case studies and qualitative research with the parents and pupils. However, there was no indication that fussiness was stronger in particular groups of children.
But you say that fussy eating is the "main reason for non-uptake", and that could mean a problem for policy decisions later. Can you tell us any more about this fussy eating? Did you get much feedback on it?
When we talked to parents, it was clear that, even those parents whose children were not taking school meals—or not taking them every day—were generally keen for their children to take advantage of the free school meal, and a certain amount of negotiation was going on between parents and their children about whether they took a packed lunch.
What I want to know is whether the issue is about the poor quality of the food or the existence of a free school meal?
No, I do not think it is to do with the quality of the food, although it might be in certain circumstances; I am not saying that that is not a factor at all. However, even if parents think that the school meals are of good quality, they know that their children seem to like particular kinds of food and not be willing to try different food but that they will eat if a packed lunch is provided.
It could be a policy issue in future, if it is a question of providing a good, wholesome meal that the children do not like as opposed to something that they need. If your evidence had shown anything on that, it would have been interesting.
It is a policy issue. One of the things that we say in our report is that following the hungry for success programme, lots of changes have already been made to improve nutrient standards and other aspects of school meals, including the presentation of food, the atmosphere in dining rooms and so on. The policy issue might be harder to tackle but, to increase uptake still further, we have suggested that one of the main things that might help is an initiative to give parents the skills that they might not feel they have to encourage younger children to try new foods and a greater variety of foods.
Is your evidence anecdotal or do you have quantitative analysis of that?
When we did a survey of parents, we asked them why their children did not always take a school meal. The main reasons were that the children were fussy eaters, that the children did not like the food, or that the parents knew that they could provide a packed lunch that the children would eat. The main factors seemed to be linked to what children were willing to eat.
One of the reasons why there might be a lower uptake in places such as the Borders could be the stigma attached to free school meals. As well as nutrition, that is one of the reasons why free school meals have been introduced. Did you detect that?
No, we did not find a previous problem of stigma, nor did a reduction in stigma emerge as a benefit of the trial. A number of the children to whom we talked in the qualitative research had previously been entitled to free school meals; we also talked to parents of such children, but stigma was not an issue with either group. Previous research that was done for the expert panel on school meals and research by TNS on the baseline value of the hungry for success programme indicates that stigma is not a significant issue, particularly in lower primary.
The study showed a rise in uptake from 53 per cent to 75 per cent. Falkirk already has a 75 per cent uptake, which tells me that the food there is probably better than in some of the other local authority areas. Perhaps there is an issue with the quality of food, because I do not think that dietary habits vary that much throughout Scotland, to be honest.
One of your first questions was whether uptake fell off because children went but decided that they did not like the food and did not go back. That was probably the reason why some took up the offer of the free school meal initially and then did not take it up so often.
There is clearly an education issue. The report mentions that some children went home and tried to encourage their parents to provide some of the foods that they got in school because they found that they preferred them to a sandwich and a bag of crisps in a lunch box. Do we need to educate parents and children further to get them to explore different types of food at home? If the free school meals policy is implemented, a significant minority of children will still not be able to benefit from it for whatever reason and we want to try to minimise that group.
Absolutely. That is one of the things that we said. To get the maximum benefit from the policy, it must be not only about children having the school lunch but about influencing their choices and diet beyond primary 3 and at home. Anything that allows parents to take advantage of whatever their children have tried and enjoyed at school to produce more nutritious food at home has to be good and will help to maximise the policy's benefits.
Many local authorities are concerned about the costs of implementation, particularly with regard to additional staff, even though that will create employment opportunities; additional kitchen facilities, if necessary; and the dining halls themselves. Given the many positive suggestions made in the research paper about
Individual circumstances will vary. Some schools might well require considerable capital investment, but we found that very few schools had to make major structural changes such as extending kitchens or building new dining halls. I do not think that, across all the local authorities, building costs will be a major issue; costs are more likely to be incurred in increasing staffing levels, food and so on.
On the policy's various impacts, we are beginning to hear from councils about the impact of staggering lunch times on other aspects of the school day. What feedback have you received from school staff on such knock-on effects?
We found that the whole lunch hour tended not to be staggered; instead, pupils in primary 1 and primary 2 were let out five or 10 minutes early to give them more time to be cleared through and to get their food from the serving hatch before the other classes arrived. We are not talking about major changes to the school day, but that five or 10 minutes will obviously have an impact on some classes.
I am delighted to hear that the committee's aim is to discover the fussy eating gene, because that will be very helpful in my household. Never mind the fact that children do not try different types of food until their first day at school; I have a child who tried nothing but pizza until he went to university.
There was a concern that wastage would increase because the children who had not taken—and presumably had not wanted—school meals before would be more likely to bin more of the food. Although we did not specifically measure wastage levels in the pilots, catering staff and supervisors in the dining room told us that they felt that wastage had stayed at proportionately the same level. The amount of food that was being wasted certainly had not increased significantly.
Is the paper that we have a précis? I take it that there is a longer document.
That is right.
I am afraid that I do not have that with me, but perhaps the figures I am looking for are in the shorter paper. What was the range of uptake across the five authorities at the beginning of the pilot and where did they all end up? The paper that I have seems to give only the average uptake.
Before the trial began, 35 per cent of pupils in Glasgow took free school meals. The Scottish Borders had the lowest uptake at just under 10 per cent.
I think that those are the figures for registration for free school meals. [Interruption.]
I am simply trying to work out the variance.
In Glasgow, uptake for all P1 to P3 pupils was 62.8 per cent.
That is right. Uptake ranged from 63 per cent in Glasgow to 37 per cent in the Borders.
So uptake in the Borders increased from 10 per cent to 37 per cent.
No. Before the trial began, uptake in the Borders for all P1 to P3 pupils was 37 per cent. That figure rose to 67 per cent. In Glasgow, uptake before the trial was about 63 per cent and increased to about 78 per cent. Before the trial began, there was a considerable gap in uptake between the authorities; there is still a gap, but it has narrowed as a result of the trial.
The variation in costs is both interesting and slightly worrying. Were you able to assess how much each authority spent on the food for each school meal?
Because we asked local authorities what they had spent on the additional meals, we know what they spent on food. However, we did not try to assess or audit value for money to find out the reasons for such variations.
I might be wrong, but I get the impression that, although the authorities expanded school meal provision, they pretty well kept the same kind of provision. In other words, if, before the trial, a meal in a local authority cost an average of £1.50 per pupil, it continued to cost £1.50 during the trial. I am just interested to find out whether some authorities are spending 75p or £2.50 per pupil.
There is quite a variation between authorities on the amount spent on additional meals for the trial. In Fife, for example, the food cost of each additional meal was 72p, while in West Dunbartonshire the cost was £3.05. I do not know why such a variation exists, although we checked that the West Dunbartonshire figure was the additional cost for food alone and did not incorporate some other costs.
I am trying to work out which factors we can allow for. We can make a general assessment of the impact of school meals being free, but we can also work out the impact of meal quality. You say that
Yes, but in no area did the quality or quantity of the food emerge as a reason for non-uptake. Gaps in uptake narrowed between areas. Areas did not significantly change their provision, which suggests that the issue is not the quality or quantity of food but a range of other factors.
I can see why you think that, but if uptake starts low and moves to the maximum, gaps will always narrow—nothing can be done about that, as you know. That must happen.
If the reason for the low uptake by children in the Borders was that the food quality there was terrible, we would not expect the uptake to increase by much.
That is what I am trying to get at. Where did the figures end up? Does a cap apply? Many factors come into play when we are trying to work out what encourages pupils to take advantage of a school meal—free or otherwise. You discount the quality and quantity of food and you have no figures on whether the pilot had an impact at home, but a key policy motivator was to improve nutrition among young people and to improve eating habits. If the pilot did not achieve that, it was perhaps in vain.
The evaluation shows that uptake increased. One presumption of the policy is that because nutrient standards for school meals are strict, an increase in uptake is a good thing and will have had a positive impact on children's nutritional intake.
On potential changes to food quality, it is worth noting that uptake in the same period among primary 4 to primary 7 pupils, whom the trial did not target, increased marginally. That uptake might have been expected to drop if food quality decreased during the trial.
I did not expect food quality to decrease—quite the opposite. I expected it to increase substantially, but I do not know whether it did.
What children's friends do influences what they do, particularly because pupils who have packed lunches often sit separately from those who have a school meal. That was not the biggest factor, but a proportion of pupils said that they took or did not take a school meal because of what their friends did.
There is obviously a lot of anecdotal evidence in the research findings.
It is qualitative research rather than anecdotal evidence.
Sorry—I am not trying to dismiss or diminish it at all. It is qualitative research that is supplemented by some anecdotes.
I did not put any anecdotes in there.
I am trying to suggest that it would chime with most people's experience of kids looking at the menu and deciding that it is a good day to have a school meal. Did you examine nutritional uptake at home? Were the children getting a good-quality packed lunch before the trial? Was their nutrition affected, for better or for worse, by the free school meals?
We did not attempt to carry out any assessment of the children's nutritional intake before or after, because of the length of the trial and the length of time from the announcement and the commissioning of the evaluation to the start of the trial. There was not sufficient time to gather the baseline evidence that we would want in order to make an accurate measurement.
I should know this: are the trials continuing in the five authorities? Are there plans to carry out any further assessments?
My understanding is that the trials stopped in June, at the end of the school year.
So people are paying now, in the very authorities in which the scheme was piloted?
Yes.
Did you get any indication of whether the children who took school meals, but did not before the trial, were the ones who were most in need of a good square meal? Do your statistics show any trends there?
Uptake among the group of children who were not previously entitled to free meals was very similar in more deprived areas and less deprived areas. There was not a greater uptake in one area.
Kenny Gibson asked about stigma. You said that nothing had come through in any of the evidence that you collected to suggest that there had been any reduction in stigma, or that stigma was a factor at all. Were any of the schools in which the pilot was being operated using techniques to try to reduce stigma, such as smart cards? If they were using such things, I guess that that would mean that nothing on stigma would come through in the research.
I do not think that the schools used smart cards, which tend to be used in secondary rather than primary schools. There were various methods for payment, which would have made it more or less obvious who was entitled to a free school meal, but it is not something that we examined in detail. In a lot of schools, the children would pay their money at a separate till and then go to the queue. It was probably not particularly anonymous before, but I would not want to give any figures on how many schools were doing that and which different systems were operated.
Are there more details in the full report about the situation in those schools before the pilot started?
Not in terms of systems for anonymity in relation to free school meals.
You say that there has been an increase in uptake in primary 4 to primary 7. Were there any reasons for that?
Sometimes it was because there was a younger sibling—some parents said that they could now afford for their older child to have a school meal because they did not have to pay for two or three children. Sometimes the older sibling heard about what the younger sibling was having for lunch: if the younger child was talking about enjoying it, the older child would be tempted to try it. Those were two factors that emerged; I am not sure whether there are any others. It was a small, rather than a large, increase.
Uptake increased from 47 per cent to 50 per cent for all P4 to P7 pupils. That is a reasonable increase.
The concern was that uptake might decrease because queues were longer or food choices were reduced.
Were all children in the school, not just children in P1 to P3, aware of what was going on?
We observed what was happening in dining rooms and spoke to children in P4 to P7 at lunch times in the case study schools. Some children were aware of what was happening, but many were not. I do not think that P1 to P3 pupils were particularly aware of the change.
Were meals cooked in some of the schools? If so, did you find differences between what was said about meals in those schools and what was said about meals that were shipped in from contractors?
Uptake was greater in schools that had on-site facilities and it was suggested—I think by local authority catering managers rather than by parents or pupils—that when there are off-site arrangements a narrower range of food is available and the quality is perhaps not as good.
Was there a significant difference in uptake, depending on where meals were cooked?
In the group to which the trial was extended, about 50 per cent of pupils took up the offer of a free school meal when there were on-site facilities, as opposed to about 41 per cent when food was cooked off site. The difference was about 10 per cent.
That is interesting.
The same situation applies in hospitals. Food that is prepared off site and brought in is never as appetising and fresh as food that is prepared on the premises.
Uptake among P1 to P3 pupils at the end of the trial was 76 or 77 per cent, which was an increase of about 27 per cent.
So the starting point was about 50 per cent. Uptake in Fife at the end of the trial was almost 10 per cent higher than uptake in the Borders, although in the Borders the average meal cost £4.65, compared with £1.79 in Fife. That difference is intriguing. I realise that rurality in the Borders means that unit costs are higher, but the difference is substantial.
I am not sure how often that happens, because even when lunch times are not staggered children queue with their class—there will be a P1 queue, a P2 queue and so on. I suspect that siblings from different classes do not often sit together, but you gave a nice example of that happening.
My kids walk home holding hands and everything.
You asked about the costs for Scottish Borders Council being significantly higher than those for Fife Council. A lot of that was to do with the large number of small schools in Scottish Borders, where having to employ one extra member of staff might have doubled the staffing. Because the proportionate change in the number of meals that Scottish Borders served was substantial, it had substantially more changes to make, including buying equipment. Those costs should not be read as an indication of the quality of the meals; an awful lot of other factors were involved.
I would imagine that unit costs fall as the number of pupils who take up free school meals increases, although local authorities will no doubt come to us and talk about financial pressures, which is completely understandable. Will there be a disincentive to improving the provision of free school meals—will councils be worried about having to pay for the additional uptake? Have you had any feedback on that?
We did not ask local authorities about that.
I know that my question might sound a bit cynical.
I suppose that what you suggest is technically possible. If local authorities do not want to pay for free school meal provision, there might be less incentive to promote it—that is a possibility.
I have a couple of questions, one of which follows on from a question Liz Smith asked. For pupils who were not previously free school meal registered, deprived and less deprived areas had the same uptake. I was trying to tie that to the overall statistics for pupils who were not registered, among whom the uptake of free school meals increased from 40 per cent to almost 70 per cent, whereas uptake among those who were registered increased from 89 per cent to 93 per cent or thereabouts. The increase was much smaller for those who were entitled to be registered and much bigger for those who were not registered. I was trying to look behind those figures, because I could not understand the situation for the least deprived and deprived areas. On the one hand there is the likelihood of pupils taking up the offer of free school meals; on the other, there is the number of pupils who would benefit. Does the net number of pupils who benefit tend to be higher in the least deprived areas than in the more deprived areas? Does that make sense?
In the least deprived areas, free school meals are being extended to a larger number of pupils.
That is fine. I was interested in the increase in the figures for Fife Council and Scottish Borders Council, which went up 32 per cent. I wonder whether the full report has a breakdown of areas in Fife that shows where the variations are. Fife is a big region with a lot of variation in terms of deprived and less deprived areas. It would be interesting to know where the FSM policy was impacting in Fife and which area benefited most from it. The assumption would be that the least deprived areas would benefit most. The issue is whether that assumption is backed up.
I am not sure that we would say that the least deprived areas benefited most. We are saying that uptake was pretty much the same in deprived and the least deprived areas. I would not say that, in terms of absolute numbers, there was more benefit in the least deprived areas.
That is what I was looking for.
We have not looked at specific areas within local authorities. We looked at the differences between local authorities and between deprived and less deprived areas across all the areas.
But there is no further breakdown for the Fife figures and for those in Glasgow?
No.
You indicated that the pilots have now stopped and that we are waiting for the roll-out of the policy. Is work being done to track what is happening in the pilot areas now that the policy has stopped?
Not that I am aware of. I assume that those local authorities will do what they normally do and keep track of the number of meals served and so on. I imagine that they will have figures on what is happening. In addition, the annual school meal census in February will show what is happening. However, the school meal census does not normally break down the figures to individual primary classes, whereas we did that for the trial areas. I do not know whether there are plans for the February census to break down the figures for those areas into primary 1 to primary 3, and primary 4 to primary 7.
There is a bit in the research findings about enhancing
Not specifically. They indicated that they were pleased that their children were trying new foods. They said things like, "I wish I could get them to eat that"—whatever "that" was. They also indicated that they had tried, unsuccessfully, to encourage their children to eat particular foods, but that when their children saw their friends eat such food at school, or had been offered it in a school context, they tried it. But parents did not have particular suggestions about what might help.
Like "Shark Infested Mince"?
Yes.
Did any children have difficulty sitting down and eating with a knife and fork? If I recall correctly, we heard in a previous evidence session that children not knowing how to do that was an issue.
That is sometimes a problem with primary 1 children. There did not seem to be an increase in the number of primary 1 children who needed such help, but we did not specifically look at that aspect. I do not think that the trial had a particular impact on that problem.
Was there any variance in how local authorities promoted the trial in their areas? Was there any variance between schools in how it was promoted? Did all five local authorities have the same approach or did their approach vary? For example, did some decide to promote the trial at local authority level or was it devolved to headteachers and classroom teachers?
I think that it was generally a bit of both, but quite a bit was done at local authority level. It is worth saying that our survey of parents found that 98 per cent of them were aware of the trial and knew that their children were entitled to free school meals. The lack of awareness of the policy was not really a problem.
Sorry—my question was not about awareness but about encouragement.
That is true. We did not look in detail at the different marketing materials or try to compare what different areas were doing, but there were many similarities. Most areas used radio advertisements, sent letters home to parents and sent out menus, but I do not know exactly how the methods in different areas compared.
That concludes our questions to you. I thank you for your attendance and your patience with the meeting's timing.
Meeting continued in private until 12:53.
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