Blog: What does it say about a society that allows school meal debt even to exist?

What does it say about a society that allows school meal debt even to exist?

No child should ever be burdened with debt. And no child should ever go hungry in a country as rich as ours.

Yet both these things are happening for thousands of children and their families across Scotland.

Low income families are in the midst of a debt crisis. At Aberlour we see the impact of this every day.

More and more families are falling into unmanageable debt as they struggle to cope.

In most cases this is debt to public bodies, such as Universal Credit advance payments, council tax arrears and even school meal debt.

Last year Aberlour published research showing that around 25,000 children had a school meal debt totalling more than £1 million. This year the figures show that, up to April, that had risen to nearly £1.8m.

This tells us that thousands of struggling families are unable to feed their children due to rising costs and reduced household incomes.

These are low income working families who do not qualify for free school meals.

Our research found that children in primary schools not eligible for free school meals will still get fed at school, even if they have no money on their pre-pay account or don’t have a packed lunch.

But the cost of that school meal is added to their account and that is when debt begins to build up.

We also found that children in high school in similar situations would often have to go through stigmatising and humiliating processes to get something to eat.

This can mean having to tell school staff – often in front of their friends – they have no money for their lunch.

What we learned was rather than put themselves through that experience children instead will just go hungry.

Free school meals are a means tested benefit that require families to earn below a certain income to be eligible.

Those income thresholds have barely risen since they were introduced in 2002, and they are now so low that significantly fewer families are eligible now for free school meals than 20 years ago.

However, child poverty has been steadily rising for more than a decade and has intensified as a result of the cost of living crisis.

More and more families are relying on food banks and charities, like Aberlour, simply to provide the basics they need for their children.

Families we work with tell us they can’t absorb any more costs as they fall deeper and deeper into debt trying to make ends meet.

So what more can we do to help and support families?

At Aberlour we have been campaigning to see an end to school meal debt. We have urged the Scottish Government to act to reduce the debt burden for families with school meal debt and to make sure no child goes hungry at school.

We have called on councils to take action to write off school meal debt for all children in their own areas.

So far 15 councils have now committed to cancel school meal debt.

But the majority of councils around the country still have children who have school meal debt.

So, we are calling on the First Minister to do two things to make sure Scotland will no longer be a country where children are shamed and burdened with school meal debt or where children go hungry at school.

Firstly, we are asking him to write off school meal debt for all children across Scotland.

If the remaining councils won’t take action, then he must step up to do the right thing.

But we know the financial pressures for low income families will persist. We need to prevent school meal debt in the first place.

Therefore, we are also calling on him to increase and extend the eligibility of free school meals to all low income families who receive any level of benefit, such as Universal Credit.

We know this will help thousands more struggling families not currently entitled to free school meals but who are worrying every day about how they will feed their children.

If we do this we can put an end to school meal debt and hidden school hunger for good.

SallyAnn Kelly OBE

CEO of Aberlour Children’s Charity

This article was written for The Scottish Sun and published on Wednesday 1st November 2023. Read the article on The Scottish Sun website.