Free School Meals and Access to Digital Education

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Cllr Gary Malcolm on problems faced by local children and parents during Covid-19

Southfield ward's Liberal Democrat councillors

The news of the government u-turn on free school meals recently was good news. Many children and their families in Chiswick and Acton need help including free school meals. The successful campaign by Manchester United footballer Marcus Rashford shows sometimes how a campaign supported by huge numbers of people can generate the right result.

The change means that free school meal vouchers will be extended across the summer holidays. Originally the government said the free school meals vouchers would end at the finish of the summer term, despite Scotland and Wales saying they would continue to provide free school meals with the voucher programme.

It appears that the Prime Minister and his team were not willing to extend the scheme but after the campaign were forced into the u-turn. With large numbers of parents in our borough having been made redundant, or working on reduced wages after being furloughed, this might allow more families to provide food for their children and themselves (as some parents skipped meals so their children could get fed).

Another issue which is causing problems is the differential education that some children are having. Some schools opened earlier than others meaning that some children are receiving face to face lessons. Others however are having to make do with lessons or teacher contact through conference calls or online learning tools.

Some pupils are not able to access these digital services due to a lack of broadband or home wi-fi services relating to some parents being in poverty. The criteria for government funded laptops is so stringent that many families cannot access internet services.

The statistics are clear that children who are eligible for free school meals are at a particular disadvantage, with 15% getting four or more pieces of offline schoolwork compared with 21% of non-free school meals pupils.

Two separate studies also raise fears that millions of children, particularly in state schools, have done very little classwork at all. 40% of pupils in England are not in regular contact with their teachers, the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) study has uncovered, with evidence of large differences in the provision of schoolwork during lockdown.

A second study for the University College London (UCL) Institute of Education estimated that two million pupils in the UK (around 20%) had done no schoolwork or managed less than an hour a day.

Your Liberal Democrat councillors have been concerned that in some schools in the borough, some classes are receiving online classes from some teachers but other teachers are not providing an online class service, so pupils of the same age will be getting different services from the same school. This is not acceptable.

The Government and Ealing Council need to ensure they are doing everything they can to ensure that schools provide safe services either face to face or digitally to all their pupils or else large numbers of pupils will fall behind.

 

June 17, 2020