A joint letter has been sent to Chancellor Rishi Sunak and Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi from 11 educational groups those representing over one million people working as teachers, school and trust leaders, support staff, and governors and trustees in the nation's 24,400 schools. The letter is asking that all children from families who receive universal credit should be eligible for free school meals as part of an urgent expansion of the scheme. The letter said, 'We are well placed to see the impact of the cost of living crisis on our 8.9 million pupils’ ability to learn and lead healthy lives. Every school day we see the benefits free school meals provide to those currently entitled. For many it is the only hot, nutritious meal they have in a day. A quality school meal helps improve children’s concentration and behaviour during lessons. We witness, first-hand, the effect they can have on improving school attendance, on children’s health, and academic performance. However, the intensifying cost of living crisis means many more are now struggling to afford school lunches. We are seeing children falling into school meal debt, and there is a serious threat to take-up of school meals and the viability of the catering service, not to mention risking the health and wellbeing of our pupils. We see the devastating reality of children coming to school unable to afford to buy lunch, because their family circumstances mean they fall outside the restrictive free school meal eligibility criteria. The Food Foundation’s latest data indicate an estimated 2.6 million children live in households that missed meals or struggled to access healthy food during April. Excluding so many vulnerable children is a real barrier to learning and must be urgently addressed. Now is the right moment for the government to commit to an expansion of free school meals, providing a nutritional safety net that supports all children to learn and achieve. The clear solution to ensuring fairness and equity across our schools is to extend universal provision, as Wales and Scotland are now committed to deliver. But as an immediate first step, free school meal eligibility criteria need to be expanded to all families receiving universal credit (or an equivalent benefit).' (image: https://www.lbhf.gov.uk/)