Marcus Rashford and the 'free school meals'.

First of all MPs haven't awarded themselves anything. MP pay rises are decided by an independent body ever since the whole expense scandal. The MPs have no say about how much and they also can't stop it. The best they can do is when they get it is to donate the extra to charity

And you are still missing my point. Everyone drawing benefits that entitle their kids to free school meals is on an extra £20 a week and that remains until April. Most of their situations haven't changed due to COVID so if it's deemed that Kids should be able to be fed on £15 a week which is the value of the vouchers then the £20 they are getting should be more than able to cover it. Either £15 is enough so until April giving out vouchers outside of term isn't needed or £15 isn't enough so why is the call being for £15?

 

You can't act like money isn't a factor, the New Forest isn't full of Money trees after all. Anything extra spent on giving them free school meals during holidays has to come from somewhere and that means doing damage to others. For example, if it comes out of the school budget like providing term time ones does that means every student is going to suffer while if it comes out of the government's pockets it's going to be clawed back in various taxes which could make things hard for some people for a long time. In an ideal world, money wouldn't be a factor but we live in the real world and it is.

And I didn't misunderstand your point. I stated you are either having to have school as normal or you are wasting teacher's time having them watch over kids when they are doing activities like watching movies. Legally any gatherings of kids require at least 1 adult for every 30 kids, even if you don't have teachers oversee them that has a massive cost. They would need at least 3200 adults just to oversee the kids currently on free school meals, if you open it up to anyone so those working didn't have to worry about childcare then it could be even worse. 3200 adults getting a minimum wage is £1.25m a week based on 5 days of attending and a day being 9 hours. That's only 200k less than the cost of vouchers and that's before the cost of making the food. It just doesn't make sense to spend so much on whats basically a holiday club when those kids are largely of parents who don't work so child care isn't needed. So you are basically paying childcare for kids who don't need it just so you can feed them while kids who need childcare as their parents work but aren't entitled to free meals don't get. And all because you can't trust the some parents to take the voucher (and extra money) to feed their kids rather than benefit themselves.

TBH the best solution would be a combination of having local business, with some governmental help to do what I saw one school doing on the news today and that was to give the parents food packages. Would allow business to help out, especially those in the food industry where currently they have a certain amount of food that is going past the best before date but is still ediable (for example bakers who might throw the excess loaves of bread away at the end of the day but its still perfectly good for things like toast) as it spread the burden, keeps the costs of providing the food low and limits the potential of abuse by the parents. With a combination of donated items from business and using the governments ability to bulk buy you could almost certainly provide way more food for £15 than the vouchers would allow

 

Giving them £15 a week vouchers isn't changing that though because its not just the 96k kids who get free school meals who fall into that, its also the ones whose parents can afford to and do feed their kids but aren't well off. It's a bigger issue, an issue that has so much to do with the parents. There have been plenty of sociological studies on this which shows how the attitudes of our parent's shapes who we are. Outside certain Asian cultures for example peoples attitude on the value of schooling is dictated by how the parents feel they got value form it and when you are living on the dole or minimum wage even if its the parents own fault because they didn't take school serious themselves it often becomes 'School didn't help me' and as such, they don't push their kids enough in school so their kids never really get the importance of school to their future and that pulls them into the poverty cycle. If you want to break them out of falling into those it's not about feeding them, its about making the parents better.

I can just use my Family as a perfect example. It's as working-class as it can be and if you look at the family tree from my Great Grandparents down there are just TWO people on the whole thing who went to uni, that's myself and my sister. And it's not a small Family either, my Grand Dad on my Dad's side is Irish so large families are pretty much the norm, my Dad has 6 siblings each who have multiple kids. My dad as the oldest was lucky, they were still doing the 11 plus to see who got into the Grammer School and he did. That benefited him and as such with me and my sister doing fairly well in school was seen as important. Pretty much all my cousins on the other hand whose parents didn't get the same focus on education are like their parents doing working-class job or living on the dole or are in crime.

So giving them £15 in vouchers isn't going to break that cycle. As I keep saying they are already getting £20 a week more in benefits and COVID hasn't changed their situations. If they aren't using the £20 to feed their kids well then either it means they aren't even trying or they simply don't have the knowledge to be able to do so. For example the breakfast clubs are often deemed to be essential to ensure that the kids have the energy to get to lunchtime, as I've mentioned they seem to get a piece of toast or half a bagel. That's something any parent should be able to do with a little forethought, head to a bakers or store at the end of the day when the bread is being sold off. That's 18-20 slices of bread so 18-20 days of breakfast for a kid. Now sure that bread is going off before you get to day 18 so what do you do, you take two slices out for the next two days and stick the rest in the Fridge, a fridge being something pretty much every family has.

But again its why I prefer the idea of not actually giving them money but giving them food parcels. It helps those who do care as it gives them free food to make meals with while removing some of the potential abuse from those who don't care. They can choose to feed themselves and not the kids obviously but it does remove some of the temptation. Maybe even take a leaf out of the likes of services like Guosto and Hello Fresh and include recipe ideas along with perhaps tips on how to store what they are given to make it last until either the next one or until the kids are back at school