School Meal Debt Fund: report

Overview

School meal debt refers to the financial burden on families that accrues as a result of the inability to pay for school meals. School meal debt can impact on the wellbeing of families and can stigmatise children of families who are experiencing challenging times.

Meal debt relates to meals where a young person or family would pay for their school lunch. It does not relate to the provision of Free School Meals (FSM).

In 2023 a campaign by Aberlour and the Scottish Sun called for us and local authorities, to work together to cancel existing school meal debt for struggling families.

While school meal debt is a matter for local authorities, we launched a £1.5 million School Meal Debt Fund (SMDF) in May 2024 to support local authorities clear historic school meal debt that had been accrued in their area. It also helped remove the impact of school meal debt on families across the country, recognising the challenges many families faced during the ongoing cost of living crisis and the impact school meal debt can have on local authority capacity to provide services.

In recognition of the demand for support from local authorities, the SMDF was later increased to over £2.8 million allowing the 30 Scottish local authorities who had applied for assistance to clear known historic school meal debt accrued in their area to 31 March 2024 as detailed in applications for funding from the SMDF.

Funding was provided to 30 local authorities through grant funding. In line with grant conditions local authorities have reported to us on how they used their funding allocations and how they continue to support families through the implementation of the Good Practice Principles for the Management of School Meal Debt published by the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA). The information in this report is drawn from those returns.

This report summarises the local authority reports as to how the funding was used, including :

• examples of good practice in meeting the principles established by COSLA
• the main actions taken by local authorities in receipt of funding
• measures in place to manage school meal debt 

This report confirms that, in line with the COSLA guidance, local authorities were taking steps to address school meal debt and provide support to families. The report is also intended to highlight good practice which has been included in the feedback from local authorities. It is hoped that local authorities will share this good practice in their support for families in tackling school meal debt.

The School Meal Debt Fund

The SMDF totalled £2,887,345.58 and supported 30 local authorities with bids that ranged from £3,908 to £655,032. The breakdown of all funding per local authority is available in the funding allocation section of this report.

All local authorities who received funding confirmed they have addressed the issue of historic school meal debt in their area and that the amount of debt in applications accrued to 31 March 2024 by families was cleared upon receipt of our funding.

In excess of 70,000 instances of support were provided to children and families.

However, it is not possible, from returns to provide an exact figure on the number of pupils helped by the removal of historical school meal debt, as local authorities collated information in different ways. Some local authorities provided an estimate, whilst others reported on either the number of pupils, families, or invoices. Those local authorities reporting on number of families or invoices may be supporting more than one pupil in each instance of support, or several invoices might apply to the same pupil.