Asked by: Nick de Bois (Conservative - Enfield North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 12 March 2015 to Question 226581, what support her Department provides to primary schools to ensure that the free school meals offered by those schools are healthy.
Answered by David Laws
The new School Food Standards came into force in January 2015 ensuring schools provide heathy meals throughout the week. The Department for Education provides guidance on the standards[1] and funds the implementation support service, including a menu checker service helping schools to provide hot, healthy menu choices for all their pupils. The School Food Plan website also provides a range of support and advice on providing healthy food in schools.[2]
[1] www.gov.uk/school-meals-healthy-eating-standards
[2] http://whatworkswell.schoolfoodplan.com/
Asked by: Nick de Bois (Conservative - Enfield North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the potential effect of the decision by Oxford Cambridge and RSA not to redevelop GCSE and A Level Turkish on the ability of students to acquire skills in Turkish; and if she will make a statement.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Government has been clear that it wants to see all pupils provided with the opportunity to take a core set of academic subjects, including modern foreign languages. There are considerable benefits to learning a second language and the Government is keen to see the range of languages at GCSE and A level preserved. It is, however, up to Awarding Organisations to decide which languages they want to continue offering as reformed GCSEs and A levels.
Asked by: Nick de Bois (Conservative - Enfield North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what support her Department provides to primary schools to ensure that all infants take up the provision of free school meals.
Answered by David Laws
The Department for Education has provided substantial support to help schools deliver this policy. More than £1 billion of revenue funding is being provided to schools over two years on top of almost £175 million capital funding allocated this year to support them in improving their kitchen and dining facilities. The department has also allocated £22.5 million transitional funding in 2014-15 to help schools with 150 pupils or fewer to implement the policy. All this funding has been provided to ensure that the meals provided are of high quality, and particularly that all schools are able to offer hot meals.
The department has also set up an implementation support service, staffed by school food experts, which schools can contact for advice and support to help them to increase take-up of meals by their infant pupils.
Over 1.6 million infant pupils (85.2% of all infant pupils) took a free school meal on autumn census day in 2014. This is a rise of 1.3 million from the 0.3 million infant pupils who were estimated to have taken a free school meal in the January 2014 school census.