A report by ‘Save the children’, which warns of the impact on health of this service, denounces that the Community is the third that invests the least in aid
The students of the Region of Murcia are, according to the latest report by the organization ‘Save the children’, the ones who receive the fewest lunch scholarships from Spain: only 2%, the study specifies, can eat for free at school because they enjoy of help. The ‘Guaranteed dining room’ report warns that the lunch service has a determining effect on the health of children with fewer resources: “Providing a healthy diet through the school canteen is an effective and efficient measure that improves nutrition and health of minors and has positive effects on their academic success”, he determines.
The report reveals that school canteen aid only reaches 11.2% of Infant, Primary and ESO students in Spain, when the poverty rate in Spain is 27.4%. The disparity between coverage by communities ranges from 2% in the Region to 25% in the Canary Islands, and only the Basque Country gives scholarships to the entire population at risk of poverty. With regard to the data from Murcia, it must be taken into account that the institutes (Secondary Education) do not have a canteen service, which lowers the coverage rate by noting zero scholarships in that age group. According to the latest figures from the Ministry of Education, of the approximately 150,000 Infant and Primary schoolchildren in the Community, only 5,000 have a dining room scholarship, which would in any case raise the total rate to 3.3%.
The low access to dining aid in the Region is due to two factors: on the one hand, the allocation for scholarships is insufficient and the income levels established for access are low; In addition, the scholarships are awarded by competitive concurrence, that is, they run out when the money runs out. In other communities, all eligible children receive the scholarship. The Region is also the third autonomous region with the third lowest annual investment per student in dining aid in Spain, only ahead of Cantabria and Melilla, and with just over 15 euros per student.
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