Active discussions

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To think school dinners are taking the mick now?

104 replies

QuietRiver · 25/09/2025 15:56

Just signed up here after lurking for ages so sorry if I do this wrong!

DS1 is in year 8 and has school dinners most days. They’ve just put the prices up AGAIN and it’s £3.20 a day now. For that he gets a slice of pizza and a cookie or a wrap and a juice. He’s always starving when he gets home and raids the fridge so I end up feeding him twice anyway.

Packed lunches would work out cheaper but he says everyone at school does dinners and I’m being tight if I make him take a sandwich.

It’s not even that the food is nice - he says the chips are soggy and the queues are massive so he barely gets time to eat.

AIBU to just send him with packed lunch from now on even if he complains? Or is this just the price of having a teen these days?

OP posts:
leccybill · 25/09/2025 17:37

Are they the only choices or is it that he doesn't want a sit-down meal with cutlery etc?
My daughter's school and mine is £2.60 for a meal deal, there's a few hot choices on each day eg. Mac n cheese, katsu chicken curry, korean noodle bowl, cheese whirl and chips, that's alongside the standard pizza slices and wraps.
Our food was terrible and expensive so our Head tendered it out and its much better now.

JaceLancs · 25/09/2025 16:16

I used to let them have a bit on their card for snacks or breakfast - then packed lunches Monday to Thursday and a full dinner on a Friday - worked out much cheaper

CeffylCoch · 25/09/2025 16:14

Send him with a packed lunch. I usually have a small amount of money in their account so they can grab a cake/drink if it looks nice

Lillygolightly · 25/09/2025 16:13

My teens had similar at high school. With teen no.2 not only was the food expensive for what it was the school kept making the dinner period shorter and shorter until she gave up buying/eating school meals at all as they just didn’t get the time!! In the end we sent her with snacks she was happy to eat at school instead and then fed her a light tea as soon as she got home followed by a proper dinner later in the evening.