Government trials for the new school meals programme, which starts in September, found those from poorer backgrounds performing better in the classroom.
They also detected “social benefits” of forcing rich and poor pupils from different classes and backgrounds to eat together.
Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, said the results showed that free school meals would help children succeed in life regardless of “their parents’ bank balance”…
Pilot schemes for the plans found that free school meals for all children “led to significant increases in attainment”, with key stage two children found to be academically two months ahead of their peers.
The review – commissioned by the Department for Education and the Department of Health – suggested this could be because the children were having a healthy meal and were being forced to socialise together.
It said: “Potential explanations for such effects may include the benefits of having a nutritious meal at lunchtime, the social benefits of children eating a meal together and potentially more positive relationships between parents and the school.”
The review described how children demonstrated “improved social skills at meal times” and how the researchers saw “a ‘levelling effect’ for children in universal areas who opted for a free school meal”.
The review said that offering the free meals to all primary school children reduced the “socio-economic differences in the quality of food eaten at lunchtime” because poorer children were no longer eating cheap packed lunches.
It added: “This finding provides some suggestive evidence that universal entitlement to free school meals may contribute towards reducing the gap in attainment between pupils from different socio-economic backgrounds.”…
More at: Free school meals will break down classroom social divides and boost learning, says report
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