From health to hard times: Fairness and entitlement in free school meals After Neo-Liberalism

Abstract

Following the election of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition Government in the UK elections of 2010, the then Education Secretary Michael Gove announced that plans to extend a pilot scheme to provide free school meals for children in primary school would be abandoned. The previous Labour Government’s pilot scheme was implemented between 2009 and 2011 and extended free school meals entitlement in Wolverhampton (UK) and provided universal free school meals for all primary school children in Newham and Durham (UK). These pilot schemes replaced previous eligibility criteria, where pupils were entitled to free school meals if their parents claimed ‘means-tested out-of-work benefits (such as Income Support) or Child Tax Credit (and not Working Tax Credit) with an annual income of no more than £16,190’ (Kitchen et al. 2013, p.1).