to complain about the state of the school lunches?

I agree the free lunches for all in reception - year 2 seems pointless especially when places like London all primary kids get them free even though a lot of families must be balling in money to even live in London. Surely this contributes to the food being mid.

Someone argued it's good for all kids to get the lunches free because the poor children won't be embarrassed but no one knows which kids get free lunches for being from poor families because it's ordered online in almost every school now. Personally I think only kids from poor families should get them just seems pointless for some child of a millionaire to get a free lunch.

Not sure if you’re serious, but it’s this;

Here

The best one I had was a Tiffin set that had 3 parts that you stacked in a flask (hot or cold) with cutlery and I used to put 2 main dishes in the bottom 2 and dessert on top. Then they carry it like a little case. This wasn’t in the uk and all the kids had them.

It sounds a faff but it really wasn’t. It was what we had the night before, no extra prep or anything. Apparently the other kids were all complaining to their parents saying ‘Marathon’s kid has got lasagna or curry and rice. Why have I got a cheese sandwich?’

My DC are 30 and 26 now.

At primary they had a packed lunch because the school lunches sounded dire. It cost me more but they preferred it and I knew what they were getting. DS transferred to the independent sector, aged 8, in 2003. His school lunches there were fab but cost £4.50. Go figure. Similar for DD at 11.

When I was at school, primary lunches were OK, secondary dreadful so I had a packed lunch. 1960s/70s.

My mother and I have the same view (remarkably). Our children went to school on a decent breakfast and had a proper hot dinner in the evening. Therefore, school lunch or whatever was an excuse for decent food was not a big deal.

Personally, I think the business of free school lunches for all children in the infants has been a retrograde step. When things are free, it closes the reasonableness of valid complaints. One has only to look at the NHS.

Majority of schools are outside catered now and food bought in and dished up at school. On the rare occasion my son has them it's 3.15 a day. Poor choice especially last 6 months and not enough but it's run by Chartwells who have shareholders and they need to make a profit regardless of food inflation

It should never have been removed from schools

DD is in year 1 and takes a packed lunch. She went to a fabulous nursery with a great on-site chef so between that and home she was used to good quality homemade food.

When she started school in reception she said she loved it, except the food. Her teacher said if she's used to good homemade food then she's not surprised DD doesn't like school food.

At least with a packed lunch I know what she's eating and the quality of it. We didnt have much luck with a thermos keeping things warm enough but DD happily eats cold pasta and things like that so I feel like I can keep the variety up. Luckily school rules on packed lunches are sensible (drink must be water, milk or juice, no chocolate and no nuts) so we have a fair amount of flexibility. She has a small biscuit or homemade cake as pudding- seems only fair when the school dinners kids get a pudding. At the moment there's only one or two other kids who take packed lunches on some days but I expect that will increase when lunches need to be paid for from year 3 onwards.

It's a shame the food isn't better, for everyone's sakes but at least they still all eat together so the community aspect is still there.

Schools don’t have the time and money for this. Even if they employed someone like you to plan meals and deal with buying the ingrediant and take care of the kitchen staff then they would need to pay you.

If they’re a PFI school they will have no control over the catering service.

I was just thinking about primary school dinners in the 80s. The only thing I could eat was grated carrot, grated cheese, and cake! 🤣
At least they didn't force us to eat stuff we hated like some kids my age. I remember they wouldn't allow pack lunches, until they relented when I was in year 6. I think the dinner ladies were out of a job once everyone could bring their own!

I used to work in a school kitchen. The portions are tiny, the ingredients are the cheapest out there ( including meat etc) and the menus sound way more appetising than the food actually is.

School food should not be for profit. Selling out to catering companies (looking to maximise profit over nutrition/feeding kids) has fucked up school food.

I’d bet good money I could make better meals, on the lines specified in my original post, for that price. They buy meat and veg and carbs but do weird stuff with it instead of crowd pleasers!

They are ok at my DS school (private school and paid lunches are a bit more expensive depends what they have) but I don't trust him not to ignore the meal with veg in favour of a ham sandwich so flask lunch it is. We use a wide mouth thermos branded one I got on Amazon. It's just the two of us so when I cook things like daal or chilli, a recipe to serve 4 generally does dinner for both of us plus 3 lunch portions. I have little tupperwares from Asda that are the same capacity as the flask, so freeze 3 sets of leftovers already mixed with rice or pasta and then it's the work of minutes in the morning to grab something from the freezer, defrost and heat in the microwave.

I did some volunteering in my kids school and noticed how small the portions were for the ks2 children. My kids were hungry after school too, they often forgot to get salad and bread after they had sat down (and not allowed to get up after sitting). I just give them packups now. Which is a shame because I think sharing a communal meal is good for children socially. My kids can be picky eaters and are more likely to eat food they don't like much if its a shared meal. I think the schools are having to offer too much choice which must cost a lot. They offer a main meal/vegetarian meal and baked potato option for £2.50. I think schools should cook one meal well and if you can't have it then bring a packup.

packed lunch it is then!

They were utterly dreadful at both the state primary and secondary I attended (late 1990s-2000s). They were outsourced to the cheapest catering companies possible, so the quality and variety was dire. It was only when I started attending the private school, which employed their own chefs who prepared and cooked every meal on site with food quality ingredients, that I found school meals could actually be nice.

It's absolutely shameful that children in this country are fed such utter shite, especially those for whom it will be the main/sole meal of the day.

They were horrible when I was a child a very long time ago. Some time in between then and now they weren't too bad but have clearly gone downhill.

They are awful. Genuinely. Im a teacher and utterly shocked at the standard

Why are school dinners so crap nowadays? When I was at school they weren't bad at all.

I agree with you in theory, but the reality is, teachers can't force children to eat the food in front of them. Even if they chose it. They can only tell parents that their children aren't actually eating the food.

£2.50 a day actually doesn't go very far anymore for households. It is the same in schools.

Our school meals also are quite 'small' to how they used to be. But every time caterers raise the prices, all hell breaks lose with parents, so rate increases are minimal and not keeping up with what it actually costs to provide more food.. Caterers can't win, to be fair.

This. The children should still be given a decent meal in the Evening. I saw so much waste, when I worked in a school at lunch time. The amount that the children were allowed to throw away was outrageous.

School meals were pretty dire almost 20 years ago, tiny quantities of poor quality food served on plastic trays. I briefly worked in a school kitchen and was shocked, especially as this was after the Jamie Oliver campaign.
The problem is that most parents never actually see the standards. They may sound nice but the reality is very different.
You've only to look at the ingredients in food supplied by the likes of Brakes etc, upf galore, hardly what we should be aspiring to feed our children.

Could I also also where you bought the flask please? 😂

In lockdown I bought my DC both a thermos food flask that has 2 sections. I just made a bit extra of whatever we had the night before and put it in the thermos. They loved it. I actually got a bit of stick because some of the kids went home saying they wanted a hot meal and they messaged me asking me where I bought the flask 😝

It is shocking what they feed our DC and then they moan we are all unhealthy.

Of that £2.50, the money allocated to provide the meal is only about 80p. The rest of it goes on staffing, equipment, maintenance, gas, electricity, water etc. The school meal service has to be self-funding - there is no funding to subsidise it. In fact, I am a governor of an infant school and we have to provide free school meals to all our children (under the national UFSM initiative). The funding we get for this from the government is less per child than what we are charged so the difference has to come out of the main school budget 😡

Ours is shocking. I raised this with the council's nutritionist who arranged some information session and taster session. I don't know what was worse - the food I tasted, or what the nutritionist said. Since then, we've been doing packed lunches.

I work in ed and in schools where there are far higher numbers of pupils affected by deprivation than the average. I've lost count of the number of times I've taken photos of the food served and complained, mainly about portion size for growing teens (many of whom will be having their only hot and in some cases the only decent meal of the day) but also the sheer crap and just how rank and bland and lacking in nutrition it looked. It seemed disrespectful to me, especially when I saw the colourful and balanced looking buffets the kitchen staff were able to put on for special guests. My DC will likely have packed lunches when the time comes unless their school does things really well. The menus often look the part.