An investigation by The Dairy Council into the number of Local Education Authorities (LEAs) offering reduced price milk to primary school children has revealed a staggering inconsistency between areas.

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Over the summer The Dairy Council contacted all the 205 LEAs in England, Scotland and Wales asking them for the number of primary school children aged 5-11 who currently receive milk at break-time.


The results show that of the 205 education authorities contacted, only 12 provided milk to over 70% of the children and 16 of the authorities did not even offer milk. The council has published a league table of all the 205 LEAs, ranking them in terms of the percentage of pupils who receive milk from their LEA.


But some education leaders have dismissed the report as unfair and misleading. Lincolnshire’s education authority, for example, is ranked among the bottom 16 schools, apparently not offering any milk to its 45,676 schoolchildren aged 5 to 11 years.


Lincolnshire County Council has rejected criticism, however, on the grounds that it has made alternative arrangements with Lincolnshire Cooperative Society to provide milk. The Lincolnshire Echo reports that 85 of the county’s 289 primary schools do actually provide milk to their pupils. The Lincolnshire Cooperative Society receives EU funding in order to provide the milk.

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The Dairy Council believes many children are missing out on school milk because LEAs wrongly perceive that there is too much paper work associated with the EU Subsidised School Milk Scheme.


During National School Milk week The Dairy Council urged more LEAs to renew their commitment to school milk.


To view the Dairy Council’s LEA milk statistics click here.