Renfrewshire Council

Who gets a universal school meal

All children in primary class 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 (P1, 2, 3, 4 and 5) get a universal school meal free of charge every day at school. 

Scottish Government will let us know when primary class 6 and 7 pupils (P6 and P7) will get a universal school meal in due course.

You may be able to apply for free school meals if you are a parent or carer of a child and are in receipt of particular benefits.

Funding and planning

Scottish Government will shortly confirm how much funding we will get to provide the additional school meals. Once we know the amount, we can start to plan for how we will provide the additional meals. This will include how we will increase the capacity of school kitchens and recruit more staff to cook and serve the additional meals. 

We are looking at options for expanding kitchen capacity in our schools. When we know what funding we will receive, we will let you know the plans and timetable for upgrading the kitchens.

These schools are now producing meals on site with some also providing meals to other primary schools and nurseries:

• Auchenlodment Primary
• St Catherine's Primary
• Rashielea Primary
• Houston Primary
• Castlehead High 

There now are 18 primary schools with production kitchens and seven high schools and Additional Support Needs (ASN) schools supporting the delivery to the other primary schools and nurseries in Renfrewshire. 

Staffing and recruitment

We are recruiting catering staff to support the provision of more school meals. These will be full time (52 weeks a year) posts.   

Each school will have a list of their own vacancies, but we will advertise all the new catering jobs and other Soft Facilities Management jobs on the MyJobScotland website. You can apply for any of the vacancies there.

Updates and information

We will keep you up to date with our plans and progress on this webpage. We will also text our Soft Facilities Management staff with regular updates on the progress and programme of planned works.