Free school lunches for poor British children - from world-leading programme back to less programme

The difference between deserving & undeserving families in Britain was est­ab­lished in the Poor Law 1834. The deserving poor were hard workers who were struggling through no fault of their own. So they des­er­ved state help. The undeserving poor were lazy and not try­ing hard enough to relieve their own hardship, so didn’t deserve help. Parliament­ar­ians believed charity increased dependence and that the good-for-nothing poor needed to be motivated into working!

A meal of oats porridge, 1906

BBC

Hunger had to be reframed as a social issue, and starving children were an even more symp­athetic cause for change. When compulsory educ­at­ion started (1870s), thousands of poor ch­ildren went to school hungry. Proponents of feed­ing these children pointed out that it was due to government mand­ate that children were not working and contrib­uting to the fam­ily food budget. Thus the govern­ment should pay. Opp­onents said that it was not the government’s responsibility to comp­ensate for poor parenting.

To improve public health, excellent new British legislation ensured clean water, sewage disposal, decent housing and compul­s­ory educat­ion. But despite great efforts, this was not enough to en­sure a healthy population. In fact the armed forces had been shock­ed by the physical health of the young men when they were trying to recruit for the Boer War 1899-1902. A third of volunteers had to be rejected on health grounds, often due to sub-standard diets.

War caused change! A Committee on Physical Deterioration was set up eg working against cholera. But nothing helped with nutrition. A quarter of London residents did not have enough money to eat well, even those with permanent jobs.

Poverty became more worrying. Social reformers Seebohm Rowntree and Charles Booth did research showing that c30% of York’s work­ing class families in 1901 found that wages were often too low to en­sure a dec­ent standard of living. Medical care cost money and parents might not call a doctor for their children. Thankfully some charities offered cheap meals for school children eg Sal­va­tion Army.

Children queued up for breakfast with their mugs, 

outside Salvation Army c1900

Food partnership

Early in the C20th, the Labour Government asked schools to provide pupils with hot lunches. Then the new Liberal Gov­ern­ment, elected 1906, passed new measures to deal with ch­il­dren’s health. School Medical Exam­in­at­ions provided treatment in sch­ools at three points in their school­ life, covering physical, mental and dental well­being, and clean­liness. And they ordered schools to of­fer meals to all pupils via the Educat­ion Provision of Meals Act of 1906. This free hot meal was likely breakfast: porridge, bread with dripping and a glass of milk. Bradford was the first Council to provide free school lunch to children: Scotch Barley Broth was served to White Abbey Methodist School students in 1907, the food being cooked at the nearby Green Lane School.

New arguments started: how was eligibility determined? How could the government encourage take-up, when children eating free school meals would be stigmatised by “normal” children? What did a nut­rit­ionally balanced meal look like?

Compulsory notification of all births to a medical officer came in 1915. Then council houses came after WW1. The UK was the pride of the entire British Empire!! [The free school milk programme wasn't int­ro­duced by Australia’s Menzies Government until post-WW2, but no food at all!]

From 1921 on, criteria were set showing which children were able to have school lunches eg mutton stew and treacle pudding. However the Act again was not implemented by most local author­it­ies. A survey from 1936 found that in the Local Ed­ucation Author­it­ies where unemployment was above 25%, few out of a school-age population of half a million were receiving free school meals.

School children drinking free milk, 1944.
The Conversation

Not until late in WW2 were laws passed which ordered all local au­th­orities to provide free, nutritious meals in schools. Part of the war effort on the home-front was to maintain morale, not ach­iev­­ab­le on an empty stomach. But national food rationing cont­inued into the 1950s. So tinned meats were popular due to their staying power, with mash. As the economy recovered, baby boomers ate corned beef or fish and chips, in canteens nationwide. Spotted dick and rice pudding with jam for afters.

The arrival of the Welfare State after WW2 meant welfare was intro­d­uced as a right: all workers would contribute and all in need would be­nefit. Thank­fully after the tragedy of WW2, the National Health Ser­vice offer­ed security from cradle to grave.

Fear arose about increasing government support in working fam­ilies’ lives, 1970s right wingers called it the Nanny State. Educ­ation Sec­re­tary Margaret Thatcher outrageously stop­ped free milk for the over-7s in 1971. Then in 1980, her Conservative Govern­ment totally ended the provis­ion of free milk. A new Education Act was introduced which halted the minimum nutrition requirement for school meals, so local education authorities only had to ensure the provision of food for chil­d­ren whose parents received income support. Worse still Thatcher encouraged the privatisation of the school meals services; the Competitive Tend­er­ing Act allowed private companies to bid to provide school meals. Now there were no min­im­um standards. Private contractors endeavoured to put food on the school dinner table at low­er costs - sugary, fatty fast foods like pizza, chips and chicken nuggets, and high-sugar drinks.

The 1986 Social Security Act cut the number of children eligible for free school meals, just as unemployment and inflation were rising. Agg­ressive advertising and inadequate invest­ment in the health and nutrition of children con­t­in­ued to have negat­ive imp­ac­ts on health and school achievement, especially in low-income families.

School children received their meal

from the canteen lady

 

To read about free lunches for British school children since 1990, find History and Policy and Iris.