TRADE unions and the Church of Scotland have joined a call for all children in primaries one, two and three in Scotland to receive free school meals.
Scotland's biggest teaching union, the EIS, public sector union Unison, and the STUC joined children's charities and anti-poverty campaigners urging the Scottish Government to adopt plans for English schools.
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg announced last week that P1 to P3 children south of the Border will all be entitled to free school meals from September 2014 in a £600 million move. The Scottish Government is expected to receive a £60m windfall as a result, but could spend the cash differently.
In a letter to Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and cabinet secretaries for finance, education and health, supporters of the move said it "creates a huge opportunity for the Scottish Government to now fulfil its ambition of providing a free healthy meal to all children in P1 to P3".
Other organisations signing the letter included Save the Children, Children 1st, One Parent Families Scotland and the Child Poverty Action Group.
They said the Scottish Government should act "as soon as possible to confirm that P1 to P3 children in Scottish primary schools will also now receive a healthy school lunch from September 2014".
The SNP pledged to provide free school meals for all P1 to P3 youngsters before coming to power in 2007.
The number of families qualifying for free meals has been extended but the promise never fully met.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article