Recommendation 10

With the need to quickly provide children with a substitute for free school meals after schools closed, the Department for Education (DfE) designed a national voucher system. The speed with which it was set up was commendable and some teething problems were inevitable. However, the system has been beset by significant problems, ultimately leading to about a third of children experiencing greater food 48 COVID-19 and food supply insecurity in the first month. A particular problem was the Government’s immediate reliance on the larger retailers to participate in the scheme, with discounters and convenience stores excluded for technical reasons, even when they were able to offer workable voucher schemes which would have helped more children. There was a need for closer collaboration on the part of both Government and retailers. The Government did not sufficiently consider the realities of where families dependent on free school meals were most likely to shop for food. We note that vouchers can be used during school holidays. Children in poverty are particularly vulnerable to experiencing insufficient nutritious food during the school holidays, so it is important such schemes have universal reach. Penalising some schools that use voucher systems outside the problematic national scheme ignores the fact that the ultimate priority, as recognised by those schools, should be keeping children fed. Although more retailers were added to the scheme, we consider that this took too long. We are disappointed at the apparent lack of willingness to quickly adapt the scheme in response to the issues that emerged.

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