Scottish Government urged to increase free school meals threshold by kids' charity

dailyrecord.co.uk:

A leading charity has called on the Scottish Government to help struggling families by increasing the number of free school meals.Aberlour believes the qualifying income threshold should be raised to nearly £28,000.School meals are free to all children in primary one to five, but First Minister Humza Yousaf recently signalled a rethink on expanding universal benefits.Extending free school meals to everyone is likely to go ahead for the later primary years, but he was sceptical about rolling it out to secondaries.He said: “I’ve got a 14 year old now.

Should people be paying for her free school meals when I earn a First Minister’s salary? I don’t think that’s the right way to use that money.

I think the better way to use the money is to target it to those that need it absolutely the most.”The current threshold for free school meals for older pupils is currently £18,725.

Aberlour said if the cut off point had risen in line with historical inflation, it would now be £27,855 per household.The charity supports universal free school meals as a “long term ambition”, but believes the next step should be increasing the threshold to help low-income families.