Black Country schools bidding for £450k to stop school meals disrupting lessons
Two schools struggling to provide school meals without disrupting lessons are bidding for £450,000 to bring their kitchen and dining facilities up to scratch.
Lutley Primary School in Halesowen and Netherton C of E Primary School are both looking to secure cash for the work.
Education bosses said both schools are having to run 'excessively long' lunch hours.
A new dining hall will be created at Lutley Primary, which will free up the main hall, currently being used at lunch time, for PE lessons. The school is applying for a grant of £230,000 from the Department for Education.
Netherton CE Primary is applying for £220,000 to install a new kitchen. Bosses say it will end the need for all meals to be brought into school through a teaching area.
Dudley's children's services boss Councillor Tim Crumpton said: "We have two schools who are unable to deliver the free school meal initiative without significant disruption to the school day."
"The bid will be submitted to request total capital funding of £450,000. £230,000 of the capital funding will be used to provide a new dining hall at Lutley Primary School to enable delivery of hot meals and reduce disruption to the school curriculum.
"The bid will also be submitted to request £220,000 capital funding to install a new kitchen at Netherton C of E Primary school to ensure that hot meals can be provided on site reducing disruption to the school curriculum and resolving health and safety issues," he added.
Since September all infant children have been entitled to free meals.
Almost 60 jobs have been created across the borough as part of the scheme.
Dudley Council received £855,000 from the Government to enable it to carry out work needed ahead of the scheme being launched in the borough.
In total 59 catering staff were recruited to provide more than 13,200 meals per day. The council said an additional 191 hours needed to be covered to provide the free meals.
The Government provided £1billion to meet the costs of providing the meals across the UK, which are available to all pupils without means-testing, over the next two years.
A total of £150 million was made available to improve schools' kitchen and dining facilities with an additional £22.5 million specifically to help smaller schools.
It is also hoped that the availability of free school meals will help reduce the obesity problem with about 20 per cent of children currently classed as obese by the time they leave primary school
