‘The sky is the limit’: From free school meals to top earner at 27

Razzia Gafur grew up in a low-income household and relied on free school lunches. The 27-year-old has a masters in astrophysics and works as a data scientist for US company Alteryx, where she now earns a substantial salary. Here, in our second #FreeMadeMe interview – in which successful adults talk about how free school meals helped get them where they are today – Razzia tells her story.

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“I am the youngest of seven children. My father was an imam who ran the local mosque and my mother was a housewife, but when I was eight, they split up and we moved with my mother from a rundown area in Middlesbrough to a similarly poor area in Newcastle. There, seven of us lived in a three-bedroom house, I shared a room with my mother and sister and we lived on benefits.

“Although my family is Bangladeshi Muslim, I attended Christian state schools, so I grew up equally British and Asian. I always had a passion for science. At age 10, I wanted to be an astronaut and at 16, I took an Open University course on astronomy. I was good at logic and got 100 per cent in my Maths GCSE but by the time I attended sixth form, only half the students in my school were getting good GCSEs and very few going to university – so getting into the University of Leicester to do a Bachelor of Science was a big deal.

“Looking back, I didn’t always have breakfast at home so getting a free school lunch in the middle of the day kept me going. Initially, I was reluctant to take up my free lunch because I was embarrassed to be seen to be a free school meal kid, but later they changed the system to fingerprint recognition that didn’t have your name and I started to use it daily because then nobody would know if you were a free school meal kid or not.

“My mum didn’t speak the best English or know much about science, but she has been my biggest supporter. Her message was: put your head down, get a good education and you will have a better life. Seven mouths was a lot to feed especially with no income other than benefits and my oldest brother's wage coming in – and so without free school meals, she would have been severely stressed.”

The Independent’s Feed the Future campaign in partnership with a coalition of campaigning organisations co-ordinated by the Food Foundation, is calling on the government to extend free school meals to all children in poverty in England. Currently, 800,000 children live in households on universal credit but miss out on free school meals because their parents earn more than £7,400 a year, excluding benefits.

Razzia adds: “I started my current employment three years ago – my job is to help businesses do data analytics more efficiently. One of my goals was to earn a high salary by age 30, so when I got there this year, it made me feel ahead of the game. I have always felt other people assume that people on free school meals will hit certain earnings and career ceilings in life. I want to say to other free school meals kids, the sky is the limit.

“It is only recently that I was able to shake off that same attitude. Call it imposter syndrome. But I now see that I am a free school meal child who has achieved on my own accord. Eating healthy is critical to being able to do that and it also has a direct correlation with mental health. That is why I support the Feed the Future campaign and call on the government to support the next generation by extending free school meals to all children whose parents get universal credit.”