£15 school meals box proves hard to swallow
Rashford leads fury over parcel ‘meant to feed child for a week’
IT looks barely sufficient to feed a child for a single day, with its solitary tin of beans, shrinkwrapped cheese sli ces and meagre portions of fruit and veg.
But astonishingly this food – the contents of a free school meal replacement parcel supposedly costing the equivalent of £15.20 in vouchers – is somehow meant to last a week.
The mother who posted the image on social media worked out the hamper would cost £5.22 from a supermarket, and demanded: ‘Where’s the rest of the money gone?’
There were shocked reactions to the image – and hundreds of other parents posted photographs of similar parcels.
Footballer Marcus Rashford, whose campaign for free school meals during lockdown led to a Government U-turn last summer, described the situation as ‘unacceptable’.
He said ‘something is going wrong’ with the school meal delivery system – in place until the voucher system used during the first lockdown gets up and running again – adding: ‘We need to fix it, quickly.’
Justin Byam Shaw, founder of the Felix Project charity which feeds the needy, also condemned the paltry meal parcels, and shared an image of a feast his organisation could supply for £30 – two weeks’ vouchers.
The parent who posted the image said in her tweet that the food was supposed to cover lunches for one child for ten days and was instead of two £15.20 weekly vouchers. Writing under t he name
‘Something is going wrong’
RoadsideMum, she said it contained ‘2 days jacket potato with beans, 8 single cheese sandwiches, 2 days carrots, 3 days apples, 2 days soreen, 3 days frubes, spare pasta & tomato’.
She added: ‘I priced that like-for-like from Asda and it came to £5.22. Where’s the other £25?’
The post went viral, with countless other parents sharing images of meagre supplies of pasta, potatoes, beans and crisps.
Rashford fumed that ‘children deserve better than this’, while Downing Street criticised the ‘ completely unacceptable’ contents of some of the packages.
However, the company which supplied the school meal replacement seen in the Twitter image said it in f act repre - sented a week of food, not two weeks.
A spokesman for school caterers Chartwells said: ‘We have had time to investigate the picture. ‘For clarity this shows five days of free school lunches, not ten days, and the charge for food, packing and distribution was £10.50 and not £30 as suggested. ‘However, in our efforts to provide thousands of food parcels a week at extremely short notice we are very sorry the quantity has fallen short in this instance.’ The UK Government has promised that the free school meals voucher scheme will be restarted soon.
Until then, schools are being asked to provide food parcels to children on school meals while they are closed – a situation that Geoff Barton, of the Association of School and College Leaders, says has left schools ‘having to piece together provision’.
The founder of a charity which serves 125,000 meals a day to those i n need in London joined the condemnation of the school meal boxes yesterday, describing the images being shared online as ‘scandalous’.
Justin Byam Shaw shared his own picture of what his Felix Project could provide for £30 – a bounteous spread of fruit, veg, meat, dairy and bread.
The charity can achieve this because it rescues unwanted food from supermarkets.
The true value of the food in the picture above is more than £300.
Mr Byam Shaw said: ‘ It’s scandalous companies can get away with that sort of standard of f ood. I don’t understand why the Government spends its money on contractors making a profit.
‘ The c harity s ector is much better placed to feed hungry children.’