Page 179
1955-56
1956-57
1957-58
1958-59
1959-60
1960-61
APPENDIX II
ASSUMED COMPLETIONS OF SUBSIDISED HOUSES
For general needs
For slum clearance and overspil1
Percentage
of flats
3 storeys
At £22 1s.
At £10
At £00
160,000
105,000 كم
or more
17
Percentage of flats (5 storeys
oreys
or more
17
5,000
25,000)
5
€0,000
90,000).
120,000
-6
7
120,000
8
120,000
10
Page 179
Page 179
190
192
THIS DOC
DOCUMENT IS THE PROPERTY OF HER BRITANNIC MAJESTY'S GOVERNMENT)
SECRET
C.P.(55) 189
5th December, 1955
CABINET
COPY NO.
64
THE SCHOOL MEALS SERVICE
Memorandum by the Minister of Education
The school meals service is a subsidised service.
The 9d. charge
is roughly equal to the cost of the food; it covers less than half the total cost of a school dinner. The Exchequer bears almost the whole of the nett cost of the service estimated at over £30 millions in the current financial year.
If we can reasonably reduce this burden on the Exchequer, we ought to do so.
www
2. The school meals service has long been accepted as playing an important part in the national policy for the health and well-being of children and as closely linked with the family allowance (see the Appendix). Children who have to travel long distances to school, those whose mothers go out to work and many others get a far better meal at school than they would otherwise. There can be no doubt that the school meal has been an important factor in the improvement in children's health and physique over the last 10 years. It also provides a particularly good opportunity for teaching good manners and forming sound dietetic habits. believer in the school meal and it is certainly popular.
I am a firm
3. How then can the cost to the Exchequer be reduced? We cannot secure any substantial saving within the existing framework without a reduction in standards. The costs of the service in each area are already scrutinised closely and pruned as necessary.
4. The Chancellor of the Exchequer asked me to consider an immediate increase of 3d. in the charge made to parents. This might bring a saving of between £2 millions and £34 millions a year. (There would inevitably be some reduction in the number of children taking dinners and an increase in the number for whom the meal would be provided free).
5. I told the Chancellor that I could not agree to his proposal without consulting my colleagues about possible repercussions on family allowances, wages, etc. and that I could not myself recommend any increase in the charge (other than one justified by a rise in food costs) until we had re- considered the whole policy underlying the school meals service. An immediate increase of 3d, would involve a new departure in policy; for the first time the charge would exceed the cost of the food.
6. If we are to consider a fundamentally new policy, as I think we should, we need to examine the principle of indiscriminate subsidy involved in the present arrangements and to ask whether the link between the school meal and the family allowance should not be broken. If it were agreed that the Exchequer subsidy should go only to those who need it, we should have Page date the intention of ultimately providing free alsof 341children
FOR
-1
TAB194
Path
and ask parents who can afford it to pay the full cost of the meat hat present auf 1992.3!
Page
7. This would obviously bring a much greater saving for the Exchequer than raising the present charge to 1/-, even though it would have to be accompanied by a generous scale for reducing the charge to avoid hardship. It might, or might not, arouse more public criticism but it would put the system on a sound basis of principle; an increase in the charge would mean a break with the policy of the last 10 years, but would still leave the important questions unsolved.
8, I already have in hand, as a first step to thinking out a new policy, an inquiry designed to find out who takes school dinners, and why, in a number of sample areas; the preliminary findings should be available by the end of the year, the complete results by the middle of March.
9. I think it would be a good thing if the Ministers more directly concerned were to consider the possibility of adopting a new policy and, in particular, of divorcing the school meal from the family allowance.
Ministry of Education, W.1.
3rd December, 1955.
D.E.
APPENDIX
1. In 1944, following the war-time expansion of the service, the Coalition Government decided to make school dinners and school milk free as a supplement to the proposed family allowance; this was held to justify fixing the allowance at 5/- instead of the 8/- recommended in the Beveridge Report.
2. In 1946, the Government of the day announced that school milk would become free when cash family allowances began and that school dinners would be made free as soon as possible. They implied that this could not be done till pretty well all children had the opportunity of having dinner at school if their parents wished them to do so; that for the time being payments by parents must continue but would not exceed the cost of the food supplied. Even in these conditions the school dinners would "form a substantial contribution to the national policy for assistance to families", and therefore the whole reasonable cost of the service, though administered by local education authorities, would in future be met by the Exchequer. Up till then the cost had been shared by local authorities and the Exchequer as part of the whole education service.
3. Local authorities continued to expand facilities on the basis that, on average, some 75 per cent of a school's pupils might be expected to take the school dinner when it was made free; and by October, 1949, 52.7 per cent of school children were taking the school dinner, compared with about 35 per cent in 1944. But the financial crisis of 1949 brought to an end the expansion of the service at existing schools. Although the policy of free school meals has never been disclaimed, it has been accepted for some years now that it will not be implemented within the foreseeable future. Since 1949, also, there have been three increases in the charge to parents Page 181 of 321