Parents could be charged additional lunch costs for their children as Rachel Reeves reportedly intends to axe universal free school meals for infants.
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson is said to have suggested the change as part of a £500 million cut to education to be included in the Chancellor’s austerity plan on Wednesday when she will deliver a spring spending statement designed to save billions of pounds.
However, Department for Education officials angrily refuted the accusations, which were widely reported in Monday’s newspapers.
They suggest continuing divisions and rows within the Government with just days to go before the Chancellor’s announcement. The Treasury strives to impose cuts of up to 11 percent across Whitehall departments’ budgets.
Presently, approximately 1.8 million children in reception classes and Years 1 and 2 receive free school meals. These are available for all children to ensure every young child has a healthy start to the day.
The reported plan is to introduce means-testing for these age groups, as already exists for more senior children. For most children in these year groups, it would mean their parents now have to pay for their school lunch.
It has also been said that the Education Secretary offered to axe funding for free period products in schools, as well as dance, music and PE schemes.
In addition, schools will be told to give teachers pay raises – but will not be given the funding to pay for them, according to reports. Instead, they will be expected to find the cash by making “efficiencies”.
In actuality, this might imply that some are compelled to cut back on employees.
This week, criticism mounted on the Chancellor when she acknowledged taking complimentary tickets to watch Sabrina Carpenter perform live.
She admitted she and a family member went to a concert “a couple of weeks ago” with tickets that “weren’t tickets that you were able to buy”.
Speaking over the weekend, she claimed she had accepted the tickets for security reasons. Ms Reeves said: “I went with a member of my family to see a concert a couple of weeks ago.
“I do now have security, which means it’s not as easy as it would have been in the past to just sit in a concert, although that would probably be a lot easier for everyone concerned.
“So, look, I took those tickets to go with a member of my family. I thought that was the right thing to do from a security perspective.”
The Chancellor later added: “These weren’t tickets that you could pay for, so there wasn’t a price for those tickets.
“Obviously, I’ll declare the value of them but they weren’t tickets that you were able to buy.”
Facing questions about clothing donations last year, Ms Reeves told the BBC that while she accepted the gifts in opposition, it was not something she “planned to do as a government minister”.
Schools are often required to give staff pay increases, but not given the money to pay for these raises which then have to come out of existing budgets.
The problem is that schools negotiate their budgets with governors a year in advance, so it is not a good idea to expect them to find money in the middle of the year just because the central government says they must. Nor does it support effective child education policy.
It’s funny how pay raises for MPs can be afforded, but nothing else for anyone else. It just demonstrates the hatred they have for us common folk.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 