Aberdeen City Council’s Education Operational Delivery Committee was today (Tuesday 14 June) updated on progress with the authority’s provision of free school meals.
A report provided to today’s committee meeting showed that the number of children registered for free school meals across the city has increased from 4281 to 4678 over the year; an increase of just over 9%.
The increase has been seen across priority neighbourhood areas and the wider city alike with interventions such as vouchers being distributed to families during holiday periods, improved education benefits processing and continued engagement with parents helping maximise registrations.
The report highlighted the preference for pupils to avoid queues and to leave school at lunchtimes as impacting on take up. To address this, work is in progress to establish a food hub at either St Machar Academy or Northfield Academy to test an alternative approach with the hub being outwith the main school building and providing a ‘grab and go’ food provision.
Committee Convener, Councillor Martin Greig, said: “It's good that more pupils are eligible for free school meals. The quality and the quantity of the food provided should be monitored so that young people are being properly nourished.
“The Food Hub proposal is an excellent way to offer an enjoyable and sociable environment for young people. If successful, we could expand this solution to other secondary schools. New ideas of this kind are welcome to keep up to date with the needs of pupils.“
Vice convener, Councillor Jessica Mennie, said: “The delivery of free school meals for children across Aberdeen is now more than ever extremely important.
"No child should ever go hungry; even in this cost-of-living crisis we need to ensure that we are doing what we can to support our children and young people as Aberdeen's new local government partnership. That is a priority now and it will continue to be a priority over the next five years.
"We will continue to work with schools, families and cross agency to ensure that we increase free school meal take up across the board year on year as evident in the progress of innovative and alternative approaches to feedback from our secondary aged young people."
Officers will continue to work with parents to help registrations and uptake to continue increasing in light of the ongoing cost of living crisis while also working to ensure that benefit and claim systems continue to ease the process of taking up entitlement.