The scheme, which has operated since 1977, is currently administered by the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) who notified Welsh Government in 2024 that they were withdrawing from offering this service. The current scheme costs approximately £3 million a year and on the 2024–25 school census day, 81,374 pupils were recorded as receiving milk, representing around 30% of eligible pupils in Wales.
Under the existing arrangements, children in Reception to Year 2 can receive free milk; and pupils in Years 3 to 6 can receive subsidised milk. The separate Nursery Milk Scheme, covering pre-school children, is outside this consultation and would not be affected by the proposals.
Two options
The consultation proposes two options, the first would see Welsh Government establish a replacement scheme with funding provided to local authorities who would administer the funding through a claims and monitoring process.
Participation would depend on each local authority accepting and administering the grant, but it would maintain a dedicated school milk offer with similar provisions to the current scheme, in terms of both financial support, eligibility and offering pupils up to 250ml of milk per day. The second option would be to end the dedicated milk scheme.
Under this proposal, children would continue to have opportunities to access milk but only through existing school breakfast and lunch provision, access would depend on participation in those services.
School milk plays a vital role
We believe it is vital that milk remains accessible to schools via a dedicated route. Dairy is a vital part of a healthy, balanced diet and milk provides a source of many nutrients including protein, calcium and vitamins B2 and B12 which play an important role in keeping the nervous system healthy. In this respect, school milk plays a vital role in helping children maintain a healthy, balanced diet which contributes to their continued growth and development.
With only around 30% of eligible pupils receiving milk under the existing scheme, there is opportunity to grow the level of participation and for more children to reap the benefits of regular school milk.
In addition, school milk provisions help develop consumption trends for the future. We believe it is important that children across Wales, the consumers of tomorrow, know where their milk products come from and see the care and attention that goes into producing it.
Create more opportunities
Under the new scheme, we encourage Welsh Government and local authorities to work with the dairy supply chain to create more opportunities for Welsh milk to be supplied to Welsh schools.
This also ties in with the recent announcement made by Welsh Government that they will be developing a National Food Strategy for Wales, which will include public procurement and within this school food is an important market opportunity.
NFU Cymru will be responding to the consultation which closes on 4 January and we encourage members with an interest in school milk to do the same. Details can be found here.
