English Schools Issue a Crisis Alert on Surge in Hungry Youngsters
According to accounts from headteachers across England, children are so hungry that they are eating rubbers or hiding in the playground because they cannot afford lunch.
A new study on food poverty in schools is set to be released next month by Chefs in Schools, a healthy eating charity that trains chefs for school kitchens. The most recent official figures show that in the years between 2020 and 2021, 4.2 million people (6%) were food insecure. 9% of all children are included.
Government statistics are actual facts that a government body reports on for statistical purposes. Official statistics is another word used in some nations.
Mounting crisis
The headteachers claim that the government is leaving schools to deal with a mounting crisis, which is reinforced by the findings of the survey. It exposes that, even before winter and high energy costs force more families to choose between turning on the warmth and buying food, many schools in England are already observing a rise in the number of hungry children.
Because the youngster did not qualify for free school meals and did not want their peers to know there was no food at home, one school in Lewisham, south-east London, informed the charity about the child who was “pretending to eat out of an empty lunchbox.”
From kindergarten through year two, all young kids in England are eligible for free school lunches. But beyond that, only kids whose parents make less than £7,400 a year are eligible, and the Child Poverty Action Group estimates that this leaves 800,000 poor kids out.
Growing demand
Many of the schools rely on funds that are already overstretched to feed hungry students who are not eligible for free school lunches. She supports the position of teachers’ unions in demanding that all children from families receiving universal credit be eligible.
Oxford Mutual Aid, a non-profit organisation that distributes emergency food packages, has had to reduce the number of delivery days because the organisation’s hundreds of volunteer packers, drivers, and organisers are unable to keep up with the rise in requests for assistance, which frequently come from primary schools.
Headteachers worry about the escalating levels of worry among the kids in addition to the fact that they frequently go to bed hungry.