Covid-19 strikes again, except this time I’m talking about Marcus Rashford and the battle to feed children during school holidays. Marcus Rashford seems to be a name in the media lately and there’s no need to question why.

As schools were forced to shut at the start of this year, Marcus set himself the task of pushing the government to provide free school meals to the kids that would miss out due to the time out of school. In England, about 1.4 million children qualified for free school meals in January 2020 – about 17.3% of state-educated pupils. Analysis by the Food Foundation estimates a further 900,000 children in England may have sought free school meals since the start of the pandemic. Marcus credits his mother for her hard work trying to make ends meet when he was young and said his determination was fuelled by this. With unemployment increasing drastically all over the country, the problem only grew greater. He teamed up with Fareshare and helped to reach even more kids in need. During this time, the number of children receiving free schools meals increased significantly from 1 million to 1.29 million. As well as this he also helped to raise a staggering £20 million.

Staying healthy for school kids and eating 3 meals a day is vital for good performance throughout school. Research has shown that students are able to learn better when they’re well nourished, and eating healthy meals has been linked to higher grades, better memory, alertness and faster information processing.

Marcus didn’t stop there however, he then wrote an open letter to all MPs encouraging them to take action and allow children to carry on receiving funding for meals throughout the summer. This heartfelt letter paved the way in parliament and forced Prime Minister, Boris Johnson into a ‘U-turn’, securing meals for children below the poverty line all over the country. MBE material, right?

His most recent campaign to extend free school meals further into next year was turned down by parliament causing an outrage on social media.

You could say that the Conservatives had their reasons to vote against this motion (partly being pushed by their leader to do so!). One of them being that there is already a social safety net in place for people out of jobs and that there are people taking advantage of it. The Prime Minister made it clear that they had already increased the universal credit amounts and that they had also handed over £63 million to every council to support people with the essentials and food. You could also say that footballers could be doing more to defeat child poverty. With the average premier league footballer’s salary being £245,000, almost eight times larger than the UK average salary (£30,800), there is massive space for improvement. Let’s have a look at the numbers: if every premier league footballer (557) donated 1% of the average salary (£2450) it would amount to £1,364,650, a significant benefit which could potentially feed many kids who require it, but this simply would not be sufficient as the government predicts it would cost £20 million a week to fund FSM. Overall, this donation from footballers would make a difference but it is not a sustainable long term strategy and also you have to question, why target footballers and not bankers or increase taxation across the board?

However, you could argue that whenever a person is in poverty the government has failed. Marcus Rashford didn’t have to do all this charity work; this is the government’s job. Furthermore, some people may argue that Marcus Rashford, like all other premier league footballers, earns millions per year and that he could be doing more to help, but just like ordinary people, he earns money for working his job. His salary may be high but just like the next person, he is not entitled to donate money.

An important aspect of this emotive debate which is often overlooked is the cost benefit analysis. We will explore this in the next blog post. A pound spent today feeding a child has a much greater impact and reduces government social spending for that same child later on in life.