– There is a lack of follow-up from the government. They haven’t exactly followed through on their promises. It is going very slowly, and we are impatient, says SV’s education policy spokesperson, Freddy André Øvstegård, to news. Free school meals throughout the country have long been a battleground for the government, and especially Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre. Before the last municipal election in 2019, Støre referred to free school meals for all school pupils in Norway as one of the most important election promises. Freddy André Øvstegård in SV says they are getting impatient with the government’s promise to introduce free school meals. Photo: Javad M. Parsa / news And when the Prime Minister and Finance Minister Trygve Slagsvold Vedum (Sp) presented the new government platform in October 2021, free school meals were one of the promises. The Hurdal platform states the following: “The government will gradually introduce a daily healthy, simple school meal and daily physical activity in schools, with freedom for the schools to organize this themselves.” In a Twitter message in 2019, Ap leader Jonas Gahr Støre attacked the then government and the Conservative Party because they would not prioritize school meals in budgets. “And we prioritize this, rather than many times more in tax cuts for a few. Good for nutrition, good for learning, a better school day for everyone!”, wrote Støre. Photo: Screen dump Twitter – Must acquire knowledge first But so far the Ap-Sp government has not prioritized school meals in its budgets, and implementation has been slow. According to the Ministry of Health and Care, the reason is knowledge acquisition. – When we took office in government, together with the Ministry of Knowledge, we gave a task to obtain knowledge as a basis for the work. What has been done so far and how is it being done in different municipalities, says State Secretary Ole Henrik Bjørkholt (Ap) in the Ministry of Health and Care. The assignment was given to the Directorate of Health, the Directorate of Education, the Institute of Public Health and the National Center for Food, Health and Physical Activity. Funds were set aside for this and an answer was given in the latter half of 2022. But we won’t know what happens next until spring. – The plan is that the knowledge base will be used to follow up the Hurdal point. We are going to communicate how we intend to follow it up in the public health report that comes in March, says Bjørkholt. – Why has it taken so long when it has been such an important issue for the government? – We have to see what has been done so far and how best to implement this. What is clear to us now is that a “one size fits all” mindset is unlikely to lead. We must find solutions that will suit the whole country, says the state secretary. State Secretary Ole Henrik Bjørkholt (Ap) in the Ministry of Health and Social Care says it is not possible to introduce free school meals for the whole country without gathering knowledge first. Photo: Esten Borgos / Borgos Foto AS We demand an answer from the government But for SV the answer is not good enough. Øvstegård believes the government is “much too far behind”, and has failed to give the promised priority. – It is a great pity for the children who now go to school and do not get this important offer that almost every other country in Europe provides. Here I think there is a need to push from the outside, and that is something SV contributes to, he says, adding that SV will demand an answer from the government as to when they intend to deliver on the promise. – If this is so important to SV, why hasn’t the party fought harder for free school meals in budget negotiations? – It is because the government has promised that they will implement this. In SV, we do it this way: the government must be responsible for carrying out its own election promises, then we fight for everything in addition to that, says Øvstegård. State Secretary Bjørkholt says it’s okay to be impatient, but that it would not have been possible to introduce free school meals across the country without spending time gathering knowledge first. – Now almost a year and a half has passed, and we think that it is a reasonable time for knowledge acquisition. We have not had any good national knowledge gathering about school food in the past. It had to be put in place first, he says.
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The government promised free school meals – little has happened – news Norway – Overview of news from various parts of the country
