Pat writes to Editors on Free School Meals

Labour's Member of Parliament for North West Durham Pat Glass has written to local newspaper editors on the Coalition's plans to axe Free School Meals for children. The text of the letter is below:

 

Dear Editor

 

Regular readers will have heard about the pilot scheme which has been providing free school meals to primary school children across Country Durham.

 

The coalition government has recently announced that this trial will not be extended when it finishes next year. In addition to this, the coalition has scrapped Labour's plans to extend free school meals to primary school children from low income working families in receipt of Working Tax Credit with a household income of below £16,190. This move would have lifted 50,000 children out of poverty.

 

Without this extension families moving off benefits and into work will be hit by an extra £210 a year per child. Saving this money is pivotal to families living in low income households who struggle to make ends meet each week. The money saved from free school meals makes all the difference to a child from a low income family; it is a birthday present or a new pair of school shoes.

 

Free School Meals for low income families would address this gap in income and act as an important incentive to work for parents. The Prime Minister, David Cameron, frequently accuses the previous Labour government of making life on benefits too easy but scrapping the free school meals extension will act as a barrier to work when included with all the other hits parents moving from benefits into work have to take.  

 

Across Durham the FSM pilot has proved highly successful: 90 % of pupils have taken up the scheme, schools have seen improved concentration and behaviour and 174 catering jobs have been created. And yet the government is ignoring this evidence.

 

Before coming to the House I spent 25 years working in education. I know that hungry children do not make good learners. The child whose stomach is rumbling because their parents did not have enough money to send them to school with a filling and nutritious lunch will not perform as well as his classmates. Free school meals for children from low income families are vital in narrowing the gap in educational attainment and raising standards in the classroom. The Toy/Lib Dem decision raises questions about the strength of their commitment to all children's learning.

 

I agree that action must be taken to tackle the deficit; but why should children be made to pay for an economic crisis that they had no part in making. 

 

A leaked memo by Chanel 4 shows that the Coalition want to redirect the cash saved by FSM into the creation of 'free schools'.  However, we in the North do not want these new free schools, as Rob Merrick reported in his article on 19 June titled 'Region is ignoring Tory revolution in education' . He highlighted that only 20 of 725 expressions of interest in free schools have come from the region, the lowest figure anywhere in England.

 

I urge readers to write to the Education Secretary Michael Gove and ask him to reverse this terrible decision, which will push our poorest children into further poverty.

 

Yours sincerely

 

Pat Glass

MP for North West Durham