Free meals available for over 1,000 pupils at Newtownabbey school

The free meal scheme, which will run from November 29 until December 21, is open to all 1,078 students at the Whitewell Road school with pupils able to avail of the college’s normal hot meal menu offered by the canteen.

Commenting on the generous effort, Principal, Ms Thompson said: “Like many other schools we don’t have extra money but any spare capacity we have we want to help our pupils and our parents.

“On the run-up to Christmas, when the pace of life just gets so much faster, we thought it was a great opportunity to help our parents.

“We have some families with up to four children at the school which when you add it all up could cost as much as £70 a week on school meals and we understand the challenges that brings. We hope this gesture goes some way to making family life more manageable at this busy time of year.

“We want to give parents a break and provide hot meals for the pupils and after receiving some funding from Deloitte, we are able to make this possible for the second year in a row.

“Last year was the first year of the initiative and the feedback was excellent from students and parents alike.”

----

--

A message from the Editor:

Thank you for reading this article. We’re more reliant on your support than ever as the shift in consumer habits brought about by Coronavirus impacts our advertisers.
Please consider purchasing a copy of the paper. You can also support trusted, fact-checked journalism by taking out a digital subscription of the News Letter.