Students Are Coming To School Hungry And Teachers Sometimes Have To Give Them Money To Eat Lunch Says Principal

Nov 25, 2019 by apost team

At Ysgol y Grango school in Wrexham, Wales, many of the students are coming to school starving. The free meal that is provided by the school is not enough for some of the kids who have gone without eating for a long time.

It recently came to light in an article in LancsLive, that parents have been sending their children to school with a cold Happy Meal from McDonald's. This discovery brought more attention to the situation. The head of Ysgol y Grango school, Stephen Garthwaite, reported to North Wales Live that some of the children are starving, and many of them go without eating since lunchtime the day before.

Garthwaite reported that some of the children are forced to ask teachers for money to pay for lunch every day. The teachers always agree to help by paying out of their own pockets. He said “I have seen first hand the way hunger is destroying our children’s futures."

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Garthwaite told Gloucestershire Live that a quarter of the children at the school qualify for free lunches, but they come to school starving because they have no food at home. The children have to choose either breakfast or lunch because the school system does not provide both. Garthwaite believes that the free school lunch program is a failure.

As the prevalence of food banks increases in Wales, Garthwaite is making an appeal to the school authorities to offer free breakfast to underprivileged children. Over a span of six months in 2019, the food bank in Wrexham handed out free food to 2,765 people. This number included 940 children.

Since 2018, the number of families that use food banks has risen by 23 percent reports The Independent. This is the sharpest increase in five years.

The main reasons for this increase are delays in receiving benefits, low benefit income and changes to the amounts of benefits that are being paid to families. North Wales Live states there has also been an increase in unemployment in Wrexham by four percent with 2,648 people who are not working.

A teaching assistant at the school, Yvonne Girvan, told North Wales Live that she witnessed school children asking staff for money to buy food. She has bought food for children, and she has spoken with other staff who have said they're paying for sandwiches for kids. She reports that these incidents are occurring with greater frequency.

A teacher at Llantwit Major School reported to Western Mail that the children are using up all their school meal allowance in the morning, so they have to either skip lunch or breakfast.

A charity named Together Creating Communities has begun an initiative in Wales to solve the hunger crisis for school children called Stop School Hunger. The charity conducted a survey about the state of mind of the children. The study found that 500 children were feeling hungry, angry and less able to concentrate on classwork.

A spokesperson from the Welsh government has spoken up about the free meal policy, and she revealed that the policies are being considered to extend to free breakfasts.

Do you believe the government should increase programs to feed children at school? Let us know your thoughts, and send links to your friends on social media to this story so they can get involved in the discussion.