This book was written and made ready for publication before COVID-19 changed our world. Or perhaps didn’t.

When schools in England locked down on 23 March 2020, the government knew it had to do something for students whose families were economically struggling. These students are officially categorised as Free School Meals (FSM) – schools provide dinners free of charge to the 1.3 million children whose families have difficulty affording food and shelter. For many of these children, school dinner is their major meal of the day, perhaps supplemented by cereal and toast at their school's Breakfast Club. FSM children and their families may be among the half million who regularly also rely on food parcels: 8–10 per cent of UK families are food insecure, with 2.8 per cent severely food insecure. Food-poor families usually depend on some form of state income support or tax relief, but many also have someone in the household in precarious, often part-time, work.

In recent years, policy conversations about school food have centred on whether meals are healthy or not, how and where they should be prepared, and whether sufficient money is allocated for them. But schools serving the poorest communities have always known that school dinners were vital in alleviating the impact of poverty, even if hunger and malnutrition had dropped out of the conversation. Schools also knew when lockdown was announced that they needed to act to ensure that their FSM children continued to be fed. Senior leaders in schools serving economically struggling communities understood that the school dinner was a high priority which needed quick and decisive action. Many schools organised food parcels, changing their catering systems almost overnight. Then, it took all bodies available to ensure that school dinners were distributed, via cars, bikes and feet.

Media coverage was quick to follow: