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DfE set up a national free school meal voucher scheme to feed children during the lockdown. There have been big problems with this, but they help to provide some insights into how to procure and run public services during a crisis and beyond. Thread…
Schools must continue providing the benefit of free school meals to children who aren’t attending school.
DfE has given schools in England 3 options: 1) provide meals/food parcels 2) use the new national voucher scheme 3) provide alternative vouchers. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-free-school-meals-guidance/covid-19-free-school-meals-guidance-for-schools
DfE has given schools in England 3 options: 1) provide meals/food parcels 2) use the new national voucher scheme 3) provide alternative vouchers. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-free-school-meals-guidance/covid-19-free-school-meals-guidance-for-schools
It’s fair to say that there has been a lot of unhappiness about the national voucher scheme!
DfE appears to procured the service using this existing framework contract: https://www.crowncommercial.gov.uk/agreements/RM6133
DfE appears to procured the service using this existing framework contract: https://www.crowncommercial.gov.uk/agreements/RM6133
There are pros and cons with this approach. On the plus side, govt needs to move quickly and there has at least been a proper procurement process if they award the contract to a supplier on an existing framework https://twitter.com/ajjolley/status/1265968225994641408
This almost certainly means more scrutiny of the supplier than if govt had directly awarded the contract to a supplier outside of a framework or run an extremely rushed competitive process.
The downside is that this framework was clearly not designed either for a contract this size – at £234m it is 20x the turnover of the provider – or for this type of service – a food voucher scheme for 1.3m children is quite different to an employee childcare voucher scheme
Unsurprisingly, the supplier has struggled: parents haven't been able to access the online system, have waited for 2 weeks for the vouchers to arrive, and then been unable to use them in supermarkets https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/may/07/government-gave-national-pupils-food-voucher-contract-to-small-company
But was there a better way? Govt has been faced with lots of suboptimal options in the crisis. Perhaps this was the best that we could hope for? Fortunately, devolution means we have some close neighbours that we can compare England’s against. It did not perform well...
There have been far fewer problems in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Why? I think there are 2 key differences in approach:
1) A far greater role for local authorities. Govts in Scotland and Wales gave money to councils, asking them to use their local knowledge to respond flexibly https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-food-fund-guidance-to-local-authorities/pages/guiding-principles/ https://gov.wales/free-school-meals-coronavirus-guidance-schools
2) Use of cash transfers to families. While councils can opt to use vouchers, they also have the option of giving money directly to families.
https://twitter.com/Kathy_CEO_CE/status/1260128799972306944
For more on the differences, I’d recommend this analysis by @hrw https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/05/28/uk-children-england-going-hungry-schools-shut
https://twitter.com/Kathy_CEO_CE/status/1260128799972306944
For more on the differences, I’d recommend this analysis by @hrw https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/05/28/uk-children-england-going-hungry-schools-shut
Looking beyond free school meals, this is another example of how top-down, centralised systems have struggled during the crisis – see also PPE, testing and tracing. @jestud @adamjlent @NickGolding @swannphil and many others have been saying this for a while. Govt should listen
Meant to tag @jesstud into this!
Some really good additional points here on how DfE could have avoided problems by supporting the systems that schools already had in place https://twitter.com/ajjolley/status/1266293740798275585
