Free School Meals: Voucher Schemes

(asked on 5th May 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, from which budget he plans to reimburse funding for schools procuring free school meals from retailers not included in the National Voucher Scheme.


Answered by
Vicky Ford Portrait
Vicky Ford
This question was answered on 15th May 2020

Schools will continue to receive their budgets for the coming year as usual, regardless of any periods of partial or complete closure, and this will ensure they are able to meet their regular financial commitments, while delivering the provision required during this unprecedented period.

Where possible, schools are encouraged to work with their existing suppliers to provide meals or food parcels. If they are unable to use this, we have developed a national scheme to provide supermarket vouchers via the Edenred online portal. This portal allows schools to directly order vouchers to be sent to families for use at Aldi, McColl’s, Morrisons, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Waitrose and M&S. Schools will not have to pay for these vouchers as the costs of this scheme will be picked up centrally by the Department for Education.

We recognise that it may not be convenient or possible for schools in some areas to use these supermarkets. Where schools use their own alternatives to the national voucher scheme they are able to claim for additional costs incurred in supporting free school meal pupils. As set out in our guidance, schools will be able to claim up to a certain limit, depending on their number of pupils, and where they are unable to meet these additional costs from their existing resources. In exceptional instances where individual schools face additional costs that are higher than the grant’s limits, schools will be able to able to apply to increase their limit. The full additional costs guidance is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-financial-support-for-schools.

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