From the beginning of October, the government will offer a scheme for primary schools to offer vulnerable students free breakfast at school until the end of January 2023. 5 million euros have been made available for this.
The Youth Education Fund Foundation (JEF) has been given the task of distributing this scheme throughout the Netherlands. In the province of Drenthe, however, little use is made of this arrangement. A total of 260 schools are now served under this scheme, of which only three are schools in Drenthe. Two in Assen and one in Hoogeveen.
“In the past, our organization has tried to contact the municipalities in Drenthe, but that has been extremely difficult to date,” says Hans Spekman, director of JEF. “As an organization, we are therefore relatively unknown in this province and we notice that schools do not really know where to find us. That is a shame, because we know from research that poverty also occurs in primary schools in Drenthe.”
According to JEF’s Wenda Post-Gall, the fact that it is a new scheme also plays a part: “It takes a while before people know what it is and how to apply for it.”
There are also various conditions attached to the scheme. For example, 35 percent of families with children in primary schools must live at or below the poverty line.