Health and wellbeing boost for pupils with morning snack

Primary and secondary pupils across the city will benefit from a mid-morning snack from October to supplement school meals and support the health and wellbeing of our children and young people.

The programme - which runs from October to March 2022 - will be rolled out across all primary, secondary and ASL schools in Glasgow through a one-off investment from the council and Scottish Government COVID recovery funding.

This is in addition to all primary pupils - P1 - P7 - receiving universal free school meals by August next year.

The move, to provide fruit to all primary children mid-morning and a hot snack in secondary schools to all young people eligible for free school meals will see more than 53,000 Glasgow pupils benefit.

The programme is part of the council's overall COVID recovery plans in the wake of the pandemic but also complements Glasgow's City Food plan and climate emergency and sustainability proposal to source local providers to supply produce for school menus.

Councillor Chris Cunningham, City Convener of Education, Skills and Early Years welcomes the plan and hopes that children and young people will reap the benefits from additional food being offered during the school day.

He said: "This programme is the ideal way to offer fresh fruit to all primary pupils and a hot and healthy option mid-morning to young people in our secondary schools during the Autumn and Winter months when we all need a bit extra to get us through the day's work.

"I know that it will also be a great help to our families and potentially free up some money towards other household bills.

"We've long since advocated the benefits of health school meals to our families and what we are now looking at is how this can fit with the Glasgow City Food Plan goals to provide locally produced provisions in our schools.

"It might be that we can look at community food growing initiatives to provide the fruit for primary schools which will in turn help our carbon footprint."

Background

All secondary pupils entitled to a free school meal will be able will have a choice of hot and healthy options each day at their school. This is approximately 11,000 pupils.

Fruit will be delivered to primary schools on a Tuesday and Thursday with the excess fruit being able to be used throughout the week. There are approximately 42,000 primary pupils.