Dear Parent/Carers,

Free School Meal Vouchers

If your child is entitled to Free School Meals, you may well have received food vouchers during the March national lockdown and school closure. Last week, we notified you that at that moment, there was not a voucher system available and so the catering team at school were going to provide weekly food parcels for children who are entitled to free school meals and are not attending school. The first set of parcels were ready to be collected from Wednesday 13^th January and many of these parcels have already been collected.

Yesterday, we received confirmation from the Government that they will be operating the national Free School Meal voucher system again through the Edenred website provider. This scheme will open for schools to place orders during the week commencing 18^th January. Schools will be given access in a staged approach to manage the demand on the system.  As many of you will be aware, the vouchers will be being sent to an email address and so in order for us to be ready to place our orders when our slot becomes available, please could those families with children entitled to Free School Meals reply to this email and confirm that they are happy for the vouchers to be sent to that address by Friday 15^th January at 1pm. If you would prefer to collect a paper copy of the vouchers from the school office, please reply to this email and inform the office. When we order paper copies, these will only be available to use at Tesco.

Each child entitled to Free School Meals will receive a £60 voucher (equivalent to £15 each week between 18^th January and 12^th February) for you to spend in stores. The Government are currently only providing free school meals vouchers during term time. If you have more than one child from our school in your household entitled to Free School Meals, then you will receive a separate £60 voucher for each. If you have children at a different school and they have chosen to distribute vouchers also, you will receive separate vouchers to use. You do not need to spend this voucher in one go, it will act similar to a gift card.  

When you receive the voucher, please follow the instructions to select the store you wish to use it within, complete a few security checks and this will then generate a code for you. For some stores, you can only use the vouchers in store, so please check how you wish to use the voucher (in store or online) before you select the store.

As many schools will be using this system, it may take time for you to receive the voucher(s), however once received you will have until 10^th February to redeem these vouchers. Once redeemed, depending on which supermarket you have selected, you can have up to 12 months to use the voucher. Please check this on the website to ensure you do not miss out. Please note that the supermarket vouchers cannot be used to purchase age restricted products, such as cigarettes and alcohol.

Please note that if your child (who is entitled to free school meals) is attending school full time, they will receive their meals through the catering service in school and so you will not receive a voucher. If your child is attending on a part time basis and you have notified us of this (for example will only be attending school for 2 days a week), you will be sent a voucher and will need to provide a meal from home on the days when they will be attending school.

Once our access to Edenred has been provided and the vouchers ordered, we will send out more information to support you with redeeming these vouchers.

Please ensure you have notified the office by Friday 15^th January 2021 by 1pm to confirm your email address or inform us if you wish to collect a paper copy from the office.

Yours sincerely,

Miss Jordan

Assistant Head Teacher