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Report into free school meal vouchers published
26/05/2021
A report written by a University of Wolverhampton academic, looking at the free school meal voucher scheme and children’s access to food during the Covid-19 crisis, has been funded and published by the British Educational Research Association's (BERA).
At the beginning of the first national lockdown in spring 2020, the Department for Education (DfE) implemented a shopping voucher scheme worth £15 per child per week in England, to provide support for children who would normally receive free school meals.
The report’s author, Senior Lecturer in Education and Inclusion Studies Dr Gurpinder Lalli, said: “The Edenred voucher scheme was problematic when it was first launched. My report highlights that it caused avoidable hardship to young people and their families and created additional difficulties for schools amid a national crisis.
“The way in which schools responded varied, and it was only possible to capture what schools had done during this period by talking directly to them.
“This demonstrated the need to develop a wider network for school leaders so that schools’ varied activities and approaches can be shared to ensure that schools learn from one another and develop consensus about what constitutes good practice.”
Data revealed that there was a lack of training for staff and parents in the operation of the voucher scheme and that school resource not only varied in terms of financial resources and funding models, but also in knowledge, specialist skills and capacity.
Lalli identified barriers to the voucher scheme included a lack of understanding of how to access the voucher scheme, a lack of ICT skills, along with stigma attached to the vouchers, and that they did not provide a budget sufficient for families to feed their children on.
The research found providing families with cash funds, opposed to vouchers, was seen as a key recommendation by interviewees as it would ensure that families are able to feed their children immediately during such critical times.
Dr Lalli looked at the experiences of catering managers, school leaders, pupils and a lunchtime supervisor in relation to the voucher scheme. He also spoke to industry experts, including a public health nutritionist and director of a food organisation.
Recommendations for school leaders included: having contingency plans for school meals in place; considering school food a central part of the curriculum, and review staff working practices to this end; continue engaging with local stakeholders to secure access to fresh produce and create seasonal menus; engage with local MPs, parent governors and pupil committees; and stagger lunchtime arrivals, and introduce one-way travel systems.
Dr Lalli’s recommendations for national policymakers were: engage with key stakeholders such as chefs in schools, school leaders, School Food Matters, the DfE’s school food unit, the Food Foundation and Taste Education; listen to the views of families by holding regular informal focus group meetings; and consider the variability of school structures and deprivation when formulating policy by adopting a more localised approach and moving away from short term solutions.
The research was funded by BERA's Small Grants Fund (SGF), which was set up in 2020 to support research projects that investigate the impact that Covid-19 had, and continues to have, on important aspects of education and educational research. Read Dr Lalli’s full report on the Bera website.
Moving forward, Dr Lalli has received funding from Generating Excellent Nutrition in UK Schools (GENIUS) to understand more about school food policy across the devolved nations and its impact on children and families. This will be a multidisciplinary project with Northumbria University, the University of Edinburgh, Queens University Belfast and Cardiff University.
He is also producing a school food toolkit that will be distributed to schools in the West Midlands to take longer-term approaches to integrating food into the curriculum, enabling them to compare their contexts to other schools, learn about what it means to adopt a ‘school food ethos’ and consider the impact of school food policies on children’s wellbeing.
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