Subscribe to trusted local news
In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever. By subscribing, you can help us get the story right.
- Subscription costs less than £1 a week with an annual plan.
Already a subscriber? Log in here.
24
Feb 2023
'Parents must accept responsibility for feeding their children’, says councillor
Parents must accept some responsibility for feeding their children nutritious meals, a council’s leadership has been told, amid concerns that a lack of nutrition is linked to poor behaviour and a rise in school exclusions.
North Yorkshire County Council’s deputy leader Cllr Gareth Dadd questioned what the authority was doing to promote parent responsibility as the meeting was told the council was working on a number of fronts to teach both pupils and other residents about providing wholesome meals.
At a meeting of North Yorkshire County Council's executive, Cllr Paul Haslam, who represents Bilton and Nidd Gorge, said:
In response, executive members highlighted a range of of schemes promoted by the council, including breakfast clubs, school programmes, adult education initiatives and projects run by leisure services.
Cllr Dadd said:
Director of children’s services Stuart Carlton said he was certain of links between children’s behaviour and attainment at school and their security at home, whether that be food or family stability.
He added children were taught nutritional values at schools and the council oversaw the provision of healthy school meals and provided advice about packed lunches.
Read more:
- Trial bus service costs North Yorkshire taxpayers £4 more per journey to subsidise
- Council leader refuses to rule out staff redundancies with North Yorkshire Council
The concerns follow a group of 150 headteachers last week urging Chancellor Jeremy Hunt to increase school breakfast funding by £18m at next month’s budget, saying pupils are disrupting lessons as hunger was getting worse.
The letter warned how the national school breakfast programme would only be available to a quarter of the 10,000 schools across England that experience high levels of disadvantage.
The warning came as the Local Government Association highlighted how 215,000 eligible children were not receiving free school meals.
A meeting of NYCC's executive had heard the county had seen almost 2,000 suspensions from schools during this academic year so far, which represented a 29% increase on the previous year.
At the same time, following a drive to promote the take-up of free school meals by the council, the number of pupils receiving food had risen, but so had the number of children who were eligible.
A Department for Education spokesman said its breakfast programme was a lifeline to families.
He added:
0