Key Briefings for School Meals
Universal, healthy, free school meals for could make a huge impact in tackling family poverty and improving children's health and ability to learn. Universal provision has a dramatic effect on the take-up of healthy school meals and on pupils' concentration and behaviour. Scotland has amongst the worst child poverty rates and health inequalities in Europe. The campaign for free school meals, in which OPFS takes a lead role, was launched in 2000 to persuade the Scottish Parliament to introduce universal free school meals and therefore ensure that every child in Scotland has at least one decent nutritious meal a day.
Scottish Free School Meals Campaign Achievements
Following years of campaign work raising awareness of the importance of free school meals the Scottish Free School Meals Campaign has achieved significant results. July 2009.
www.cpag.org.uk/scotland/meals_bill_main.htm
More Cash Needed for Free School Meals
Council leaders are to ask the Scottish Government for more funding for free school dinners, June 2009
www.costsectorcatering.co.uk/online_article/More-cash-needed-for-free-sc...
Extending Free School Meals to all Children in P1-P3
Scottish Government News Release: Extending free school meals to all children in P1-P3, Oct 2008
The Scottish Government announced in October 2008 that free school meals would be rolled out to all children in Primary 1 to 3 from 2010.
www.scotland.gov.uk/News/Releases/2008/10/02082551
Hungry for Success - Further Food for Thought
HMIE Report Hungry for Success - Further Food for Thought, Jan 2008
www.hmie.gov.uk/documents/publication/hfsffft.html
Hungry for Success
Baseline Research of Implementation of Recommendations of External Panel on school meals - Hungry for Success, 2006.
Previous Scottish Government research finding that cost was a key factor for nearly a third of secondary school pupils who chose not to take a school meal can be found at
www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/89259/0021349.pdf
Free School Meals (Scotland) Bill Consultation Report (2005)
A consultation document on the main issues surrounding the proposals in the Free School Meals (Scotland) Bill was drawn up in 2005.
www.scottish.parliament.uk/business/bills/pdfs/mbconsultations/SchoolMea...
The Scottish Free School Meals Campaign
The Scottish Free School Meals Campaign calls for school meals to be made free for all pupils. The link below leads to some historical information about the campaign. www.freeschoolmeals.org.uk