Universal free school meals begin in Wales for youngest children

Young children have started to receive universal free school meals this week, but older children in Wales must wait.

Reception pupils, aged four and five, are being offered the meals from this month as part of a phased rollout to all primary school children by 2024.

Eight local authorities have said year 1 and 2 pupils will also qualify from the start of term.

But the Welsh Conservatives said the plans were "wrong" to include the children of "millionaire families".

All of Wales' approximately 272,000 primary school pupils are set to get free lunches by 2024. It is part of a deal between Plaid Cymru and the Labour Welsh government.

The Welsh government and Plaid Cymru said their joint policy would be extended to around 6,000 nursery-age children.

"It's nice to have something back," said Gethin Tomos, the father-of-two pupils at Ysgol Nantgaredig in Carmarthenshire.

Mr Tomos' youngest has just started in reception class and so is eligible for free school dinners, while his older daughter doesn't qualify yet.

"It's a good idea obviously. It's very important that all children get offered some sort of free meal throughout the week," he said.

Newport, Ceredigion, Blaenau Gwent, Torfaen, Pembrokeshire, Conwy, Vale of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire councils have all said pupils under the age of seven will get free school meals from this week.

In Anglesey and Gwynedd, reception and year 1 classes will be eligible and Caerphilly plans to extend provision to year 2 pupils in November.

Many councils, including Wrexham, Pembrokeshire and Conwy, are due to extend the provision to all primary school pupils from September 2023, earlier than the Welsh government target of 2024.

At Ysgol Nantgaredig, all children in reception and full-time nursery started getting free school meals this week.

Catherine Davies has a daughter in year 4, and although she welcomes the scheme, she believes means testing might be a better way to focus the help.

"Dependent on where you are on the scale of how much income [you receive] and how comfortable you are, perhaps it's more help for some than others," she said.

"I think [means tested] just makes a bit more sense".

Headteacher Steffan Griffiths said around two-thirds of the reception class had taken up the offer of a free school meal as well as the majority of the nursery children.

While it was "working fine" at the moment, he said there would be more challenges as the scheme is expanded.

"At the moment we're feeding just over a 100 pupils within an hour and 15 minutes during our lunch break with three members of staff," he said.

"If you add 20, 30, 40, 50 pupils by next summer to that number it's going to be a huge challenge to do the same within the same period of time with the same number of staff".

Some councils across Wales have had to adapt and extend school kitchens to meet demand, and some have struggled to recruit extra staff.

Gwynedd council has written to parents and carers to ask them to help work in schools to "ensure the success of delivering free school meals" while also "earning some money".

Ellie Harwood from the Child Poverty Action Group said she was "absolutely delighted" to see the scheme begin.

"It's a wonderful thought thinking of the littlest children starting school this week... knowing that all of them can go down to the dinner hall, sit down and eat together with their friends," she said.

She said councils and schools should be commended for getting the policy off the ground, despite the "postcode lottery" of which year groups are eligible in different areas.

"Targeting additional funding into services that directly benefit children is a really good way of making sure that children don't suffer unnecessarily in the cost of living crisis," she added.

The policy of universal free school meals for all primary pupils is part of a three-year cooperation agreement between the Welsh government and Plaid Cymru.

Marking the beginning of the scheme, Plaid and the Welsh government said free school meals would also be extended to full-time nursery pupils in schools.

Some councils including Merthyr Tydfil and Carmarthenshire had already said full-time nursery children would be eligible from the start of this school term.

Ministers earmarked £35m of funding, on top of £25m in the last financial year, to upgrade kitchens and digital systems along with £200m over three years for the day-to-day costs.

First Minister Mark Drakeford said: "Families throughout Wales are under huge pressure because of the cost-of-living crisis and we are doing everything we can to support them.

"Extending free school meals to all primary schools is one of a number of measures we are taking to support families through this difficult time."

Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price said the policy would mean "no child will need to go hungry while they are in class".

Plaid said it ultimately wanted to see free school meals for secondary school pupils too.

But the Welsh Conservatives said "limited resources" should be focused on the poorest.

"There is a cost-of-living crisis and we need every single penny of public funds to be targeted at where it is most needed, which Labour and Plaid's blanket approach fails to do," the party's leader Andrew RT Davies said.

The youngest children in England and Scotland already receive universal free school meals with plans to extend it further in Scotland.