Thursday 6th April 2017

Post by **refitman** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 7:10 am

Morning all.

Post by **adam** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 8:23 am

From the end of last night...

TechnicalEphemera wrote:
HindleA wrote:https://www.theguardian.com/society/201 ... es-uk-says

NHS risking people's health by rationing test strips, Diabetes UK says
Diabetes charity finds patients face restrictions on test strips prescribed, which they need to monitor blood glucose
The whole diabetes service round here is slowly collapsing as funding is diverted elsewhere. I guess more people will end up in hospital as a result.

A decision so stupid you could stick a blonde wig on it and call it foreign secretary.

My kids both have type 1 (since they were very young, 3 and 4). The only rationing point that has ever been made to us was to tell us not to rush to test for ketones unless there were several indicators. Monitors tell you to test whenever you're hyper but as I understand it those particular test strips are very expensive and there isn't a need to check off the back of one hyper reading unless you know there are other things going on (sickness, reduced insulin dose...)

The linked story kind of says everything.

HindleA · Post by **HindleA** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 8:29 am

Morning

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/ ... nforceable" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Truss’s plan to increase probate fees may not be legally enforceable

HindleA · Post by **HindleA** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 8:34 am

http://paullewismoney.blogspot.co.uk/20 ... ed-to.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

MOTHERS MUST PROVE THEY WERE RAPED TO GET BENEFITS

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/claiming-be ... e-children" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... ur-consent" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

https://www.theguardian.com/society/201 ... are_btn_tw" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Willow904 · Post by **Willow904** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 9:06 am

Except the government has completely failed to put any credible system in place by which women can claim via the rape exemption.
How this got through parliament is incomprehensible. The government is merrily volunteering random people such as nurses, who haven't been consulted and may not even be willing, to seemingly guess if a claim is credible or not. On what basis they are supposed to make this guess is unclear.

citizenJA · Post by **citizenJA** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 9:31 am

Did T May ever go on her victory tour throughout the UK or did she decide to play it safe and go to Saudi Arabia instead

citizenJA · Post by **citizenJA** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 9:31 am

Good-morning, everyone

tinybgoat · Post by **tinybgoat** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 9:31 am

Happy Birthday yahyah,
hope all is ok.

RogerOThornhill · Post by **RogerOThornhill** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 9:50 am

Morning all.

Laurie Macfarlane‏
@L__Macfarlane

Follow
More
Incredible chart: Until the referendum, people weren't too bothered about the EU http://www.economist.com/news/britain/2 ... ion-search" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; …

There you go - this is what happens when you care more about your party unity than what people are really worried about.

RogerOThornhill · Post by **RogerOThornhill** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 9:52 am

Another great bit of policy making.

Lifetime Isa chaos: Fees could leave savers £60k worse off than pensions, as banks refuse to offer accounts

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04 ... -pensions/

The Government's Lifetime Isa scheme is in chaos as not a single high street bank is offering the accounts, amid fears it could result in a mis-selling scandal.

Despite officially launching on April 6 just three providers have agreed to offer the accounts, one of which was last night accused of ripping off savers by charging "disturbingly" high fees.

Daily Telegraph calculations reveal that the Share Centre's Lifetime Isa will leave savers as much as £60,000 worse off than they would be if they save the same amount into a company pension over the course of 30 years.

citizenJA · Post by **citizenJA** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 9:52 am

I'd turned away from all news for a couple days
We see the news others decide to publish

Post by **adam** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 10:04 am

Supreme court rules for council and against parent in appeal on school absences

Judgement here

RogerOThornhill · Post by **RogerOThornhill** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 10:15 am

adam wrote:Supreme court rules for council and against parent in appeal on school absences

Judgement here

from the Guardian story.

His lawyers had argued that there was no case to answer since Platt’s daughter had attended school regularly. The school register recorded her attendance at 92.3%.

Which isn't that brilliant - we work towards a target of 96%.

Post by **adam** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 10:20 am

RogerOThornhill wrote:
adam wrote:Supreme court rules for council and against parent in appeal on school absences

Judgement here

from the Guardian story.

His lawyers had argued that there was no case to answer since Platt’s daughter had attended school regularly. The school register recorded her attendance at 92.3%.
Which isn't that brilliant - we work towards a target of 96%.

I think there is a 'notional' national target of 96%, up from 95% a few years ago. The holiday made her attendance drop from 95% to 90.3% - at a time when it was very clear in law and practice, and in the news, that parents were likely to be prosecuted for taking their children out of school on holiday during term time.

Willow904 · Post by **Willow904** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 10:29 am

Supreme court backs council, not parent, in term-time holiday case

The supreme court has just delivered its ruling in the term-time holidays case. And the Press Association has snapped this.

Jon Platt has lost a supreme court battle over taking his daughter on holiday to Disney World during school term-time.

Parents aren't allowed to make reasonable decisions about their own children's lives and welfare in our extremely authoritarian country.
Jon Platt is right. Your parental instinct that your child is too unwell to attend school can be second guessed by a head teacher who can choose not to authorise the absence and thus criminalise you for simply caring for your child. Children aren't allowed to be ill. Children with below average attendance are referred to welfare officers, even if the school knows they have health issues and paediatric appointments. This is my own personal experience and it's truly exasperating. Children can't all have below average amounts of absence. Children with health problems are included in attendance figures so academies chasing an outstanding Ofsted report don't want them, or want them in school even if it's detrimental to their health and well-being. Since the rule banning taking term-time holidays came in a culture of suspicion, accusations and hostility has crept into the relationship between parents, children and schools which is hugely damaging. Woe betide anyone who has a child who starts throwing up on a Monday and stops on a Wednesday, takes off the advised 48 hours from last vomiting and sensibly doesn't take their child to the doctor's because it's just a stomach bug and it would be irresponsible to expose sick, elderly people unnecessarily. Your headteacher now has the power to arbitrarily make you a criminal by simply deciding not to authorise your absence.

citizenJA · Post by **citizenJA** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 10:30 am

Q: What do you say to people who think putting VAT on private school fees to extend free school meals is a good idea?

May says if Labour got into power, they would bankrupt Britain. Schools would be in a parlous condition. They would borrow £500bn. The government is already getting more pupils into good and outstanding schools. Labour want to level everything down.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/bl ... 76df18b1ba" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

holy cow

RogerOThornhill · Post by **RogerOThornhill** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 10:42 am

re the term-time holidays - I've never really understood why the ability for HTs to authorise up to 2 weeks absence was taken away from them.

Seems a bit odd when the rhetoric is "giving power back to teachers".

One of the issues might have been "give in to this one and there will be chaos" with schools half-empty in the weeks coming up to holiday periods.

Post by **adam** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 10:44 am

Willow904 wrote:Supreme court backs council, not parent, in term-time holiday case

The supreme court has just delivered its ruling in the term-time holidays case. And the Press Association has snapped this.

Jon Platt has lost a supreme court battle over taking his daughter on holiday to Disney World during school term-time.

Parents aren't allowed to make reasonable decisions about their own children's lives and welfare in our extremely authoritarian country.

I've been a secondary school teacher for about 18 years, all but the first year in one big inner-city school, so my experience is quite long but limited to one place. I honestly think that this is an extreme reaction.

Jon Platt is right. Your parental instinct that your child is too unwell to attend school can be second guessed by a head teacher who can choose not to authorise the absence and thus criminalise you for simply caring for your child. Children aren't allowed to be ill.

Where a child has historically low attendance, the point can be reached where some kind of medical evidence will be asked for before any further ill-health absence is authorised, but it's very rare. I think it happens once every two or three years, which would be a rate of between 0.2 and 0.3% - it's an outlier.

Children with below average attendance are referred to welfare officers, even if the school knows they have health issues and paediatric appointments. This is my own personal experience and it's truly exasperating.

Mine too. Not going to argue with this - we don't do it but it's happened to me more than once.

Children can't all have below average amounts of absence. Children with health problems are included in attendance figures so academies chasing an outstanding Ofsted report don't want them, or want them in school even if it's detrimental to their health and well-being.

I think you mean 'above average' and obviously you're right. Students aren't targeted on the basis of their attendance compared with their peers but with their attendance compared with nationally imposed targets and also against their historic attendance. The problem with ill-health attendance isn't with students with medical conditions, which we know about and account for, it's with students regularly taking the odd sick day over and over again. In part, it's wanting to investigate the kind of attendance that would put your job at risk if you were at work.

Since the rule banning taking term-time holidays came in a culture of suspicion, accusations and hostility has crept into the relationship between parents, children and schools which is hugely damaging. Woe betide anyone who has a child who starts throwing up on a Monday and stops on a Wednesday, takes off the advised 48 hours from last vomiting and sensibly doesn't take their child to the doctor's because it's just a stomach bug and it would be irresponsible to expose sick, elderly people unnecessarily. Your headteacher now has the power to arbitrarily make you a criminal by simply deciding not to authorise your absence.

Again, and (I hope) not confrontationally, I think this is an extreme reaction - parents would be told if there was likely to be a problem with authorising - it would only be relevant for students with historically poor attendance who had already been told that any further medical evidence couldn't be self-certified.

I think I teach in a very good school, with good sensible people - we employ our own EWO, for example, who has strong and busy relationships with almost all of the families who have attendance issues.

I think with the holiday thing - which this is about, not ill health - it would be very difficult for a parent not to know that this was a live issue that was going to lead to prosecution. He knew what he was doing and he decided to engineer a confrontation about holidays, not ill health.

Edit - tidy up, sorry.

StephenDolan · Post by **StephenDolan** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 10:54 am

citizenJA wrote:
Q: What do you say to people who think putting VAT on private school fees to extend free school meals is a good idea?

May says if Labour got into power, they would bankrupt Britain. Schools would be in a parlous condition. They would borrow £500bn. The government is already getting more pupils into good and outstanding schools. Labour want to level everything down.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/bl ... 76df18b1ba" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
holy cow

Never, ever pulled up on this bullshit.

gilsey · Post by **gilsey** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 11:05 am

Willow904 wrote:Except the government has completely failed to put any credible system in place by which women can claim via the rape exemption.
How this got through parliament is incomprehensible. The government is merrily volunteering random people such as nurses, who haven't been consulted and may not even be willing, to seemingly guess if a claim is credible or not. On what basis they are supposed to make this guess is unclear.

And this is on top of the points you raised the other day, about divorced parents and second families.
Any policy that needs a 'rape clause' shouldn't see the light of day.

gilsey · Post by **gilsey** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 11:08 am

I think the tories have lost the plot, tbh.

John Major's 'bastards' running the Brexit show, how did that even come about? Where are the moderate conservatives?

They've elected a PM with no imagination and even less sense of humour. God help us.

NonOxCol · Post by **NonOxCol** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 11:10 am

Morning.

Look everyone, it's the only Guardian columnist more consistently wrong than Giles Fraser!

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... k-robinson" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Remember: he has no tribe!

AnatolyKasparov · Post by **AnatolyKasparov** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 11:25 am

Simon Jenkins wrote something I actually agreed with recently. Took me a while to compose myself, tbh

gilsey · Post by **gilsey** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 11:33 am

May dismissed claims that government cuts are making it impossible for councils to deliver decent services. Labour was to blame for the need to cut spending, she said. And she said that Conservative councils showed how costs could be cut without services suffering.
[Conservative councils] have been able to keep council taxes down and they have been able to deliver good quality, and improving in many areas, local services as well.

She said that the Conservatives were the party of low council tax.
Under Labour, council tax doubled.

Under the Conservatives council tax in England has fallen by 9 per cent in real terms.

That headline national figure is a result of Conservative action.

Locally and nationally, we helped freeze council tax in the last parliament, and we have given local residents a veto over excessive tax rises.

My bold. Quite a few conservative councillors wouldn't agree with her, never mind the rest of us.

HindleA · Post by **HindleA** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 11:42 am

Council tax has increased in real terms for the targetted as the default position.

Willow904 · Post by **Willow904** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 11:46 am

Thanks for the response Adam.

I don't want to go into too much detail about my own personal case, but I will say that schools deal with attendance stuff on a daily basis. They know the law, they know their own systems, they know what their various automatically produced letters mean and they know what a welfare officer is and what they do. It may seem clear, fair and no big deal to you, but are you sure it seems as simple and reasonable to parents who are first encountering these systems?

When my son became unwell I didn't know any of these things. I was also very worried about my son and was very focused on trying to look after him and get the help he needed through the NHS. It took me nearly a year to get a referral to a paediatrician, for instance (and he's doing much better now that he has

) Understanding attendance letters and knowing what the school required to authorise absence wasn't a top priority and no one ever explained anything in a way I could understand. After 2 years I've only just learnt the name of the person responsible for attendance admin (and that attendance admin is even a thing!) Letters threatening prosecution, with no reference to all the things you have discussed with people at the school and felt you were getting some understanding and support on, really strain the parent/school relationship. Although I agree holidays are a different thing, many people who take term-time holidays pretend their child is ill. If schools are encouraged to crack down on holiday absences it inevitably effects everyone, not just holiday makers. Poorly children must "prove" they are poorly, a parent's word is doubted, relationships sour.

Your school does sound like they have a good balance, but there are plenty of threads on mumsnet that suggest I'm not the only one to have had a bad experience. It's the use of impersonal letters full of jargon and requests for medical evidence without saying what kind of medical evidence (what was wrong with the evidence I'd already provided?) that I've found particularly frustrating, all the time making sure you and your child understand that low attendance, even when you are ill, is a failure. Rewards for perfect attendance re-enforce this, making sure children understand that those who are ill more often are less worthy than those blessed with perfect health. Poorly kids will face enough of this when they become poorly adults, surely a little bit more understanding and a little less expectation of perfection wouldn't harm children's education that much?

PorFavor · Post by **PorFavor** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 11:58 am

Good morfternoon.

11:49

Donald Tusk, the European council president, will be arriving in Downing Street at about 1pm. He and Theresa May will not be holding a press conference after their meeting, and No 10 sources are playing down the significance of their talks. It is “not a major event”, one said. (Politics Live, Guardian)

Oh. Just a casual drop-in, is it? Is this how they're hoping to play it in future? (Going forward, if you like. Clearly.)

NonOxCol · Post by **NonOxCol** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 12:07 pm

AnatolyKasparov wrote:Simon Jenkins wrote something I actually agreed with recently. Took me a while to compose myself, tbh

I believe that has happened to me as well.

But you can't seriously write about the *current* BBC political coverage, state that it's "palpably left of centre" and expect to be taken seriously. It's absolutely flabbergasting that anyone still accepts or believes this, given the hard evidence concerning senior appointments and even censures of certain individuals.

StephenDolan · Post by **StephenDolan** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 12:13 pm

http://www.publicfinance.co.uk/news/201 ... re-falling" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

But hey, Labour boooooo

Tubby Isaacs · Post by **Tubby Isaacs** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 12:18 pm

According to the internet Brains Trust, Ken was talking historical fact and the Zionists who control the media are making false accusations of anti-Semitism.

What a nuisance all these bloody people are. They're one up from people who write in capital letters.

Fair play to Corbyn for taking Livingstone on. Hopefully lots of them will clear off with Livingstone.

HindleA · Post by **HindleA** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 12:19 pm

Total false economy to only support people with the "highest needs",the previous Tory maladministration here attempted to create a new category to further the reduction(already set at 6,000) of what was previous highest need categorisation,thankfully failed and booted out,although it was limping on the reliance on Lib Dem sitting on hands after UKIP defection.

Tubby Isaacs · Post by **Tubby Isaacs** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 12:19 pm

NonOxCol wrote:
AnatolyKasparov wrote:Simon Jenkins wrote something I actually agreed with recently. Took me a while to compose myself, tbh
I believe that has happened to me as well.

But you can't seriously write about the *current* BBC political coverage, state that it's "palpably left of centre" and expect to be taken seriously. It's absolutely flabbergasting that anyone still accepts or believes this, given the hard evidence concerning senior appointments and even censures of certain individuals.

Cameron's "long march through the institutions".

Post by **adam** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 12:21 pm

Willow904 wrote: Rewards for perfect attendance re-enforce this, making sure children understand that those who are ill more often are less worthy than those blessed with perfect health. Poorly kids will face enough of this when they become poorly adults, surely a little bit more understanding and a little less expectation of perfection wouldn't harm children's education that much?

Can't argue with a lot of what you say. I would say that I very much agree with this - my two will never have perfect attendance records if only because of regular medical appointments they have no timetabling control over, and I know it's true for lots of other students. I've started to show students the trend of their attendance - our system will produce an up to date graph for anyone - so that it's possible to identify a student who has had their attendance slip on specific occasions because of their existing condition but that other than this they can see they're doing well, and another who is drifting down in steps because they have a single day off sick every few weeks.

I think that we probably all have some things we are kind of small c conservative about and I think there is real value in saying to some students - about behaviour, punctuality and appearance as well as about attendance - that this is what the consequences would probably be if this happened to you at work. You can moderate that advice for kids who have specific issues.

AnatolyKasparov · Post by **AnatolyKasparov** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 12:21 pm

Yes, it is no coincidence that some "Cameroon Tories" made a point of reading Gramsci as well.

Tubby Isaacs · Post by **Tubby Isaacs** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 12:21 pm

StephenDolan wrote:http://www.publicfinance.co.uk/news/201 ... re-falling

But hey, Labour boooooo

This spending could do with a "triple lock".

Tubby Isaacs · Post by **Tubby Isaacs** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 12:25 pm

AnatolyKasparov wrote:Yes, it is no coincidence that some "Cameroon Tories" made a point of reading Gramsci as well.

Thatcher-Major were good at it too. Appointing people with "business experience", they used to call it.

They didn't really crack the BBC properly though. But they tried. From 1988:

" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Post by **adam** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 12:26 pm

On the term-time holidays thing, I also think it creates some quite interesting problems for schools. We are pretty good at not slacking off at the end of term - we effectively stop at 10am on the last day before christmas for carol concerts (in a church! in a multi-cultural school!) and so on, and we let the kids go at lunchtime on the last day of the summer term, but we move them up a year at the beginning of July and start 'next year's work rather than just drift to a vague end.

If i was at risk of prosecution because of holiday absence, I would be very arsey indeed about schools effectively stopping teaching for a few days before holidays, or about reward trips (which we do, even if only for a day), or about term-time trips - our orchestra goes off to Spain or Italy every other year at the end of the summer term, and we took kids skiing this year in term time for a week.

AnatolyKasparov · Post by **AnatolyKasparov** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 12:28 pm

NonOxCol wrote:
AnatolyKasparov wrote:Simon Jenkins wrote something I actually agreed with recently. Took me a while to compose myself, tbh
I believe that has happened to me as well.

But you can't seriously write about the *current* BBC political coverage, state that it's "palpably left of centre" and expect to be taken seriously. It's absolutely flabbergasting that anyone still accepts or believes this, given the hard evidence concerning senior appointments and even censures of certain individuals.

I think what the likes of Jenkins mean by this, is that they weren't totally uncritical cheerleaders for Brexit.

RogerOThornhill · Post by **RogerOThornhill** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 12:53 pm

So...the DfE have finally got round to updating their Board Minutes and shoved out 8 all at once. But don't get too excited

https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... t-meetings" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Openness and transparency are only for everyone else. If we put out minutes like that we'd get a right bollocking.

Tubby Isaacs · Post by **Tubby Isaacs** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 1:02 pm

That's more like an agenda than minutes.

RogerOThornhill · Post by **RogerOThornhill** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 1:09 pm

I can just imagine the discussion.

"Board Effectiveness, Now, does everyone think we're effective?
"Yes"
"Excellent. Next item"

pk1 · Post by **pk1** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 1:09 pm

I don't know much, if anything, about VAT in schools & on supplies of FSMs but found this interesting comment BTL at the Times:

So it is proposed to make free school meals available to all primary age children, including not just middle-income parents who can well afford to pay, but presumably the children of parents who are earning enough to have their child benefit taxed. It would surely be more logical and a better use of limited funds to find a means of ensuring that kids who currently qualify for free school meals during term time get adequate nutrition in the school holidays as well.

Labour's suggestions on VAT appear to have fallen into the same trap as Michael Gove, writing in The Times recently. School fees are currently exempt from VAT. This means that schools do not charge VAT on their outputs (fees) but can't recover the VAT they are charged on their inputs (expenses). If you make school fees VATable (and you can't do this in any case until the UK is out of Europe, because the VAT exemption is the result of an EC directive), then you also allow private schools to reduce all their standard-rated input costs by 16.7%. Since the VAT system involves paying over (or being repaid) the difference between the VAT you have charged and what you have been charged in an accounting period, you could well end up with a situation where schools with large capital expenditure programmes receive large, regular cash refunds from the taxpayer.

Is s/he right ?

RogerOThornhill · Post by **RogerOThornhill** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 1:10 pm

Britain Elects‏ @britainelects 2m2 minutes ago
More
Mark Reckless AM (South Wales East) has left UKIP.

RogerOThornhill · Post by **RogerOThornhill** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 1:16 pm

'To lose one Tory deserter may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.'

Or recklessness even...

Tubby Isaacs · Post by **Tubby Isaacs** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 1:23 pm

Reckless will reinvent himself as a champion of farmers, and the need to keep full access to the Single Market.

Tubby Isaacs · Post by **Tubby Isaacs** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 1:36 pm

Matt Zarb-Cousin‏Verified account
@mattzarb
Theresa May will now introduce a variation of the free school meals policy. Have no doubt about that.

I have lots of doubt. They're more worried about schools not being able to afford teachers.

Post by **adam** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 1:51 pm

Ukip says Reckless should stand aside for next Ukip candidate on regional list

From the daily politics. I think they have a very good point.

AnatolyKasparov · Post by **AnatolyKasparov** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 1:55 pm

RogerOThornhill wrote:
Britain Elects‏ @britainelects 2m2 minutes ago
More
Mark Reckless AM (South Wales East) has left UKIP.

Widely reported that he tried to rejoin the Tories, and they told him to naff off

EDIT: though it seems he is going to join the Tory group in the Assembly, but not be an actual party member. Errrmmm...........OK then.

HindleA · Post by **HindleA** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 2:14 pm

https://www.moneymarketing.co.uk/issues ... l-lewis-2/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Paul Lewis: Why I don’t believe in tax ‘burdens’

gilsey · Post by **gilsey** » Thu 06 Apr, 2017 2:20 pm

pk1 wrote:I don't know much, if anything, about VAT in schools & on supplies of FSMs but found this interesting comment BTL at the Times:

So it is proposed to make free school meals available to all primary age children, including not just middle-income parents who can well afford to pay, but presumably the children of parents who are earning enough to have their child benefit taxed. It would surely be more logical and a better use of limited funds to find a means of ensuring that kids who currently qualify for free school meals during term time get adequate nutrition in the school holidays as well.

Labour's suggestions on VAT appear to have fallen into the same trap as Michael Gove, writing in The Times recently. School fees are currently exempt from VAT. This means that schools do not charge VAT on their outputs (fees) but can't recover the VAT they are charged on their inputs (expenses). If you make school fees VATable (and you can't do this in any case until the UK is out of Europe, because the VAT exemption is the result of an EC directive), then you also allow private schools to reduce all their standard-rated input costs by 16.7%. Since the VAT system involves paying over (or being repaid) the difference between the VAT you have charged and what you have been charged in an accounting period, you could well end up with a situation where schools with large capital expenditure programmes receive large, regular cash refunds from the taxpayer.
Is s/he right ?

It would need to be a hell of a capex programme, given that presumably by far the biggest expense of a school would be teachers. No input VAT on wages.