SCHOOL MEALS
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Alfli6ukh the recent eirchlar of the Board of Education, Which has had some notice in your columns, drops the former requirement of medical examination and recommendation preliminary to the grant of school dinners, and urges periodical mitritiOn surveys for the purpose of ensuring that all children get supplementary nourishment who need it, it is to be regretted that the policy which is to govern school feeding is still tO remain on a purely medical basis. The effect of this is to rule out school feeding as a preventive measure. I suggest that a sound policy should cover both prevention and cure. There is the family which has owing to a gradual increase of its members reached the point where, with a fixed income, there is no longer sufficient food for the mainten- ance of their physical efficiency. It is the children of such families who, when they begin to flag, are a proper object for medical attention. There is, on the other hand, the family which has suffered a sudden and substantial drop in income owing to the death, illness, unemployment or desertion of the breadwinner, and is faced with a situation in which, with rent having to be paid as usual and absorbing an undue proportion of the reduced income, a shortage of food becomes a necessarily prominent factor. Here school feeding is economic and preventive, and has the object of keeping the children up to the physical mark and so avoiding' the need for medical attention. It is through such assistance that a family can often be tided over a difficult period without unnecessary suffering for the children, till the income of the family is again sufficient for its needs.
The refusal of school meals to the children of families in such circumstances seems to be contrary both to the ',spirit and the letter of the relevant section of the Education Act, which specifies lack of food in its obviously detrimental effect on education as the ground on which school meals may be provided from the rates. Neither malnutrition nor subnormal nutrition, which figure so largely in the official circulars, are mentioned in that section, nor is there in it evidence of any intention that meals are to be withheld from children known to be underfed, until the actual arrival of the sYmptoms of such conditions.—YoUrs faithfully,-
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