Free School Meals in London
Sadiq Khan’s announcement of a historic £130 million emergency funding plan to provide all primary school children in London with free school meals for one year is brilliant news and a lifeline for many families in Edmonton.
This will be a huge relief for families struggling with the cost-of-living crisis, saving them around £440 per child across the year. The Mayor’s funding will provide a hot meal each school day for 270,000 primary school children in Years 3-6, removing the stigma that comes with identifying children as poorer than their peers.
This will help to improve the overall take-up of school meals and build on the universal infant-free school meals that are already provided for children in Reception and Years 1 and 2. It is vital that we ensure that all children have access to healthy and nutritious food, and this announcement is a major step in the right direction. It will be up to a Labour Government in 2024 to pick up this baton and roll out the scheme to across the country. In a country as rich as ours, child hunger is a choice. We must choose to make it history.
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