Portsmouth headteacher raises concerns about half-term school meals shake-up

The Department for Education has announced that schools will not need to deliver free school meals during the February half-term holiday, as that responsibility will be absorbed by local authorities.

This means that for one week only, the 7,500 children on free school meals in Portsmouth will be fed by the council, rather than their schools.

Headteachers are concerned that this is an unneeded shake-up, particularly for just a week, but the council insists it will do ‘everything possible’ to support families in the city.

Ali Beechurst, headteacher at Lyndhurst Junior School, says it would be easier to keep the whole process in-house.

‘If it was done through schools, that would mean less work for the council,’ she said.

‘Portsmouth City Council is brilliant and works very closely with the schools, but it just seems like an addition of labour. I don’t know why the council is being made to do this just for one week.

‘It seems strange to do this – I just hope that this leads to local authorities stepping in throughout every school holiday, because that would help us out quite a fair bit.’

Food packages sent out to replace free school meals this week have been met with mass outcry, after parcels that cost the taxpayer £30 each contained food barely worth a fiver.

The Department for Education says children will be adequately supplied with food using the £170m Covid Winter Grant that was set up last month.

Leader of Portsmouth City Council, Cllr Gerald Vernon-Jackson, said the council will instead be providing food vouchers to households.

He said: ‘By doing this, parents can get things they know their children will eat, and everyone actually gets their money’s worth.

‘At the moment, we’ve only got funding for February half-term, but the government should absolutely do this for all school holidays.

‘We know that coronavirus has hit people on low incomes the hardest, so we’ve got to do everything possible to ensure our children don’t go hungry during the school holidays.’

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

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