Hungry for change

Journalist Nic Paton looks at how schools go above and beyond to keep children fed despite the spiralling cost and current infrastructure, labour and supply pressures they face.

You see headlines in the media and on social media of cooks having to turn children away because they can’t feed them.

Or them having to chase parents for money for food.

It is awful; that is heartbreaking for the staff. We would never do that and have never done that.

It’s not hard to find the sort of headlines Kathryn Fox, school business manager at St Patrick’s Catholic Voluntary Academy in Sheffield, is undoubtedly referring to here. ‘School meals are “moving towards a crisis”’ (ITV News in January), ‘School forced to sack teachers and staff as energy bills rocket by more than 300 per cent’ (Daily Express, February),

‘Cost of living crisis: 1.8 million children facing poorer quality school meals as food costs rise’ (Sky News, October 2022) and ‘School meals will shrink without help to tackle rising costs, warns food boss’ (The Guardian, May 2022).

Between soaring food inflation and energy costs, labour shortages and rising levels of deprivation and need, it is clear schools and school leaders are facing significant challenges right now, especially over school meals and keeping children – all children, not just those eligible for free school meals – fed and warm. What help the government has offered (for example, increasing the funding for free school meals last year and including schools in its energy support scheme) is barely touching the sides when it comes to the need, NAHT members have told Leadership Focus. However, just as with how schools and school leaders responded to covid-19, members have been going above and beyond to think creatively and keep children from going hungry, often even, in fact, managing to enhance their food offers.

In Kathryn’s case, for example, the school now provides a free breakfast and hot meal to all its 280 children, irrespective of their parents’ incomes. “Back in 2018, we brought our catering in-house,” Kathryn explains.

“The quality of the food wasn’t very good, and it was how the company dealt with its staff; plus, it was making a profit, and we didn’t think that was right.

“We are in the most deprived constituency

“We wanted to remove that stigma completely. Then covid-19 kicked in, and we decided we needed to support families on furlough or who weren’t working. We decided, at that point, that we would give free meals across the board to everybody.

“We already did it for the universal infant free school meals and the income-based free school meals, but we decided just to do it across the board, no questions asked; it is a free meal for everybody,” Kathryn adds. Of course, funding all this has been challenging. “We discussed it with our governors and agreed that we could put it in the budget each year. But then I apply for charitable grants and donations and hire out our premises a lot; we do quite a bit of fundraising throughout the year. We recently won a Tesco community grant from its blue tokens scheme for £1,500. We’ve received grants from Marks & Spencer. I just did one to Spar. So there are lots of small grants – £500 here and £1,000 there – but it mounts up,” Kathryn explains.

“Our staff pay for their meals, so we make a little on that. What we say to people is that 50p to 60p is going to buy a meal for a child. Anybody who donates just that is fantastic. But we had a parent donate £200 the other day, which was unbelievable.

Andrew Moorcroft, head teacher at Boughton Leigh Infant School in Brownsover, Rugby, has a similar story. However, his school’s focus has been as much on providing a warm community space as on keeping tummies full. The school has established a Brownsover Families Winter Project with the support of its local church and community association.

The school provides a daily free food market, a ‘warm hub’ for its families and those from three nearby primary schools; it also provides hot meals in the evenings seven days a week.

“From feedback, we could see all the way back in the spring last year that families were finding life increasingly challenging,” Andrew tells Leadership Focus.

“We could also see the position was going to get worse, not only with food prices going up but also with the imminent hike in energy costs, causing bills to soar in the winter.

“Families can also reduce their energy usage by accessing the warm space. This warm, bright space is available for children at school to use when completing their homework and to enjoy social time with community members. This prevents families from unnecessarily heating and lighting their rooms at home.

“I spoke to the local church, and it had been having similar thoughts regarding its congregation. We set out trying to think about how we could do it. We met with the Brownsover Network, which is a range of charities and agencies, and shared our idea.

“Our biggest challenge was that we did not have the capacity to cook or the money to source the food. However, the church was able to provide volunteers who were happy to do the cooking for us.

“Our local community association jumped at the chance to help and agreed to fund us. The funding allows us to provide hot meals seven days a week and a warm space from 4.30pm to 6pm,” Andrew continues.

“We’re having to be very careful ourselves with things like putting the heating on. The community association paying for the extra hour-and-a-half worth of heating has limited the impact on us. The building is already warm, so it is just a matter of keeping it warm, and so it is only a marginal extra cost.

“We also provide hot takeaway meals. So if a member of the family is working and unable to attend, we will provide a hot meal, a bit like a meals-on-wheels, that the family can take away with them. They can even pre-order and come to collect it.

PAUL JACKSON, HEAD TEACHER, LONDON

At Manorfield Primary School in Tower Hamlets, London, head teacher Paul Jackson has established a weekly food pantry for families, with food donated from The Felix Project, City Harvest and other charities or the wider community.

Working in partnership with Family Action, families pay a small £3 fee to access £25 to £30 worth of food per week, with the pantry currently serving around 30 to 40 families. In partnership with other charities, it also distributes several hundred frozen meals before each school holiday; these are given out in the

“Initially, we were thinking about our free school meal families who were really struggling, but actually, this current crisis is far bigger than that. It is also about those in full-time work who are struggling; they are finding it extremely challenging. It is humbling to see the level of need in the community.

“January saw a real upturn in demand. Perhaps benefits or salaries were paid a little early to cover Christmas, but January was also a very long month. The number of people saying they are struggling has really widened. The warm space and hot meals are a little something that we can do to improve our families’ lives.

“We all know that if you’re hungry, thirsty or cold, you can’t concentrate. Learning can’t take place until we’ve got all those things in place. We think of ourselves like a large family: we look after each other and help each other in any way we can. It is lovely to see the community supporting each other,” Andrew adds.

PAUL WHITEMAN, NAHT GENERAL SECRETARY

For NAHT general secretary Paul Whiteman, this is an important point that mustn’t get overlooked in the positive fact that schools – yet again – are rising to meet a crisis head-on. “I think the current situation demonstrates two things,” he tells Leadership Focus.

In the edible kitchen: Ibrahim

Rima

Emelia playground at the end of the school day. we keep the plates spinning? With great difficulty. It is about making efficient savings wherever we can, prioritising this and generating external income.

Much like Kathryn Fox in Sheffield, Paul has brought his school lunch catering provision in-house, and while Tower Hamlets Council offers free school meals to all primary school children, his school is also running a free daily breakfast club for more than 100 children.

Recognising that staff may be feeling the pinch at this time, staff are also given a free meal if they eat their lunch with the children in the dining hall, with 90% taking this up.

“We have to rely on external fundraising campaigns that go well beyond the local community because the local community hasn’t got the money to give. So, we write applications to gain donations from businesses and other individuals and networks. It is just about making sensible decisions.

“The reward is huge, but it does take its toll. plan to leave at the end of the summer after 16 years as a head teacher. I’ve decided to take a break because it is having an impact on me, the pressure and the stress. I barely see my children – even though I choose to do those additional hours, it isn’t sustainable.

“We need to fund the system adequately. It is as simple as that. Yes, schools need to use their budgets as efficiently and effectively as they can. But we also need to fund the system adequately. Recognise where schools are doing this over and above; that we are filling the gaps that have gone missing from the local authority or other services. Recognise that schools are absolute centres of the community – and properly fund them.

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“Secondly, it demonstrates our members’ absolute commitment to children’s safety and development. And it is why it irks me so much when the government, around industrial action, tries to paint a picture that our actions will somehow damage children’s education. Well, actually, our actions are all designed around the fact that we’re the ones who truly care; the politicians in Westminster are wrapped in a cocoon of headlines, whereas we see and deal with real life every day. When we move away from the bald statistics and you see the reality, that’s where the caring profession steps in.

“Never, ever doubt the commitment of school leaders and teachers. And, frankly, anyone who insults them by publicly doubting them is foolish,” Paul adds.

NATALIE ARNETT, NAHT POLICY LEAD FOR SCHOOL BUSINESS LEADERS

“You cannot educate children and young people effectively when they’re hungry,” agrees Natalie Arnett, NAHT policy lead for school business leaders, highlighting that NAHT is part of the School Food Review Group (see panel at the end for more on this), calling for a government-led overhaul of school food policy and funding.

But it is, he concedes, an added pressure and burden on school leaders. “How

“If the government is really serious about supporting schools in deprived areas, then let’s go beyond the pupil premium and look at how we properly, adequately, support not just the learning side but the social side as well,” Paul adds.

Serving behind counter Sandra Tomkins, kitchen assistant

In teaching kitchen (left): Paul Jackson, head teacher Edwina Lewis, chef in residence

Children:

Wissam

Kayan

Sara Iftikhar

JANE HILL, HEAD TEACHER, DERBY JULES HARDISTY, SCHOOL BUSINESS MANAGER, DERBY

Jane Hill, head teacher at Gayton Junior School in Derby, has implemented a ‘grab a breakfast’ scheme for children with her school business manager Jules Hardisty.

“When we came back in September, it was very clear we’d need to keep the cost-of-living crisis on our senior leadership team’s (SLT’s) agenda; it was something we’d need to keep coming back to. That we were keeping on top of numbers and patterns and asking SLT members to keep coming up with ideas for things we could try to run,” she says.

“We spent £40 on an Asda delivery, just on breakfast staples, for example, breakfast bars, cereal variety packs, crumpets and things like that. To begin with, we decided not to advertise it –because we felt we’d have everyone coming in – and instead to keep a record of the children. We could then start to build up a pattern, a picture, of the children who were starting to struggle the most.

“We spoke to the governors about it in January, and one of the governors, who is heavily involved with a church offering warm spaces, said, ‘how do you know you’re getting this to everyone who needs it?’. And we didn’t know, really.

“So we sat in the SLT meeting later that week, and our deputy Dan O’Donnell said, ‘is it something we could start offering to everybody?’ So Jules mentioned it to the guy who organises our supply teachers, and he immediately sent us £200 worth of Tesco vouchers,” Jane adds.

“We agreed that from the school’s budget, we would get some supplies in, but then we would have to look at external funding because, obviously, our budgets are pressed like everybody else’s. We’d have to find a way of funding it,” emphasises Jules.

“So I put out a bit of a plea on my LinkedIn to people I know, basically saying children do not learn if they’re hungry and that we were seeing children coming in not having had breakfast, for whatever reason. We have no judgement on them, and we don’t want to stigmatise them, but we would like to be able to do something.” and thought, ‘this can’t be done; we don’t have the funds’. But I think you just have to believe you can do it because if we didn’t feel it was possible, we wouldn’t have left the starting blocks.

The Tesco voucher donation was just the start, and community donations have now topped £1,000. “That money is coming from people who support us; for example, parents and grandparents have raised money for us (one raised more than £200 from charity football matches). Some has come from local businesses. Severn Trent, for example, which does some assemblies with us, emailed its office, and the company was immediately supportive,” Jules adds.

“We did initially say to parents that we’d do it for January to see the numbers before promising to do it continually. If we’d had to give away 100 breakfasts every day, we couldn’t sustain that. But we think that £1,000 will now see us through to the end of the school year,” Jane continues.

“We were very explicit to parents: ‘we are trying this’ and ‘we can’t promise that we can keep it going’. And they appreciated that. People are not resentful of those receiving benefits at the moment. People are very much willing to help,” Jane adds.

At Ysgol Trefonnen Primary School in Llandrindod Wells, Powys, head teacher Jessica Stuart-Lyon and family engagement officer Jen Craven have worked to set up a ‘community fridge’ scheme where people can, for £1, fill a bag with fruit, vegetables, bread, cake and frozen meals. The scheme was launched last October and has expanded from there.

What are other

schools doing?

To find out how members were going above and beyond to feed and support their students and communities, NAHT carried out a snapshot survey for feedback. The fact many members replied in minutes showed us just what an important issue this is for school leaders. Here is what some of them said.

“In the front lobby of our school, we have set up our own food bank,” said Mairead Waugh, head teacher at St Philip Howard Catholic Primary School in Hatfield. “It is open from 7am to 8pm on weekdays and Sunday mornings. The school provides links to our local food bank, too.

than 70 holiday club sessions. Children attended and were provided with a range of enrichment activities surrounding healthy eating, keeping healthy, physical sessions and craft activities. The children were each supplied with a hot meal daily. These sessions targeted the most disadvantaged children in our school’s community,” said Kim Webb, assistant principal and SENCo (inclusion manager) at Kingsland CE Academy in Stoke-on-Trent.

school’s budget on a coat and shoes for a pupil who had not dressed appropriately for the season. We have also arranged for domestic appliances, such as a cooker, for some families.

“We have recently worked with Greggs and a local business to sign up for the breakfast club, and this makes sure each and every child gets a good breakfast.”

“We are trying to help those people. The children come in, they get some breakfast bars and juice boxes, and there are no questions asked because we don’t want them to feel it is something to be embarrassed by. However, our free school meal numbers have skyrocketed since covid-19, too; absolutely soared. We’ve gone from 61 to 106.

“You have to be creative. You have to go out there and think outside the box a little bit. It can be done. We sat there

JEN CRAVEN, FAMILY ENGAGEMENT OFFICER, POWYS

to the whole community. We’re now getting roughly 70 to 80 people a week coming,” Jen explains.

“We put on events as well. For example, in December, we cooked a Christmas dinner with all the trimmings. It is helping people during the current cost-of-living crisis and creating a social aspect.

“We are lucky to have a multi-purpose room attached to the school, so people can come in during school time, get the food, have a cup of tea and so on. But even if you can only open it after school, I would recommend it. If you have the space, definitely do it,” she says, adding that if anyone wants to get advice on how to set up a similar scheme, she is happy to be emailed at jcraven@trefonnen.powys.sch.uk

“All our office staff have been trained to offer additional support to parents, from applying for Happy clubs during the holidays to making sure those with no recourse to public funds have access to help. We support parents in connecting to a local charity to help pay for school lunches. We also have emergency supermarket vouchers for crisis times,” she added.

“We have set up a food bank within my office (also a baby and toiletries bank) that children, parents and staff can access at any time,” said Andrew Carter, deputy head teacher at Sandal Castle VA Community Primary School in Wakefield. “No records are kept, and no logs are made. It’s simple: if you need it, take it,” he added.

“We have a free breakfast club; approximately 60 children attend each day,” said Dee Bleach, head teacher at Mayflower Primary in Tower Hamlets.

“This means they are at school on time, having eaten a healthy breakfast. We are a healthy school, going for gold healthy school status for the second time. I’m on the working group for improving school meals; it’s really important that schools are models for healthy eating.”

“We run a free breakfast club,” said Sarah Hewitt-Clarkson, head teacher at Anderton Park Primary in Birmingham.

“Our food bank was run on free donations; we now pay £70 a week for about three bags for 25 families. We work with a local neighbourhood scheme, which has funded £2,000 worth of loo rolls, sanitary pads, washing powder, floor cleaner and some extra food. A local restaurant has previously provided 150 hot meals a week; we’re looking to do this again.”

“In conjunction with the Hubb Foundation, we have provided more

“Over the past two years, we have distributed more than 700 meals to the vulnerable families in our community. We have a community freezer to store surplus foods from our school’s kitchen. These foods are blast-chilled as a ready meal and a dessert. The food is prepared on-site. We have a ‘blessings cupboard’, an on-site food bank where parents and carers have open access to food and hygiene items. We have distributed more than 500 hampers to the most vulnerable families in our community,” added Kim.

“We run a healthy snack tuck shop, which is run by the year five pupils,” said Vicky Harrison, head teacher at Tankersley St Peter’s Primary School in Barnsley. “It is very popular, and we have many year fives eager to help out.”

“We have a residential facility that we lovingly call The Lodge,” explained Nathalie Akhmatova, head teacher at Wolverdene Special School in Andover.

“Pupils whose families cannot afford heating and hot water often come to school and ask if they can shower in The Lodge. They might also bring in their dirty washing and ask us to put a load on.

“We have spent money from the

“Every pupil has breakfast in school every day,” said Victoria Hepburn-Fish, head teacher at Victoria Infant and Nursery School in Workington, Cumbria.

“We work with Magic Breakfast, funded by the Department for Education, due to the high number of free school meals to support this, and the school pays a subsidy towards the costs. Cumbria County Council has approved an initiative, which I was involved in discussing with cabinet members, to ensure ‘no child goes hungry’ and provided all schools with free school meals an amount of funding.”

“We have set up a food and essentials trolley for families to help themselves,” said Carol Bond, head teacher at Elm Park Primary School in Hornchurch.

“Additionally, we have used our own personal money to top up families’ gas or electricity meters. Our local community has helped to raise money to support us in helping families with rent arrears, school trips, food shopping and so on.”

“We run a breakfast club from 7.30am to 9am, with reduced costs for siblings and financial support if needed,” said Julie Kelly, head teacher at West Meon CE Primary School in Petersfield. “We also offer an after-school club with supper from 3.30pm to 6pm, with reduced costs for siblings and financial support if needed.”

The School Food Review Working Group is a coalition of 36 organisations spanning charities, educational organisations, catering companies, unions and academics, all committed to working together to improve children’s health by reforming the school food system. The group believes in the positive impact of an improved school food system on children’s learning and health and is campaigning to build a more resilient and fairer school food system, one that enables every young person to thrive, no matter where they live. The campaign focuses on five areas:

1. Entitlement: increasing eligibility criteria for free school meals so that millions of children won’t be left behind

2. School food procurement, operations and contract management: improving guidance and procurement processes to put a focus on value and quality

3. Accountability and quality assurance: putting in place effective and transparent mechanisms so that schools and caterers can report how they are meeting pupils’ nutritional needs

4. Uptake: introducing auto-enrolment so that 200,000 children already entitled to free school meals don’t miss out

5. Funding: make it fair, appropriate and transparent so that schools and their caterers can deliver nutritious school food for everyone.