No lockers and no lunch rooms - is this the norm?

I really wish DS didn't have to carry stuff around all day. School bag, PE (and footy kit) and when there's cookery it must get really interesting.

If they are very horrified, and they have the means, they would get their kids out.

David I suspect that most state school parents would be horrified at children having prison style lunch and students having to carry around all their belongings all day.

Human, are the students dissatisfied with this arrangement?

Do they have a school council where they could express their views?

I know that things are difficult if there are limited dining facilities in a school, but they may be able to have double or even triple sittings with timetable changes. My friend's DC's school has three 30-minute sittings, and if the child is not having lunch, they are in lessons.

I can't seen why any school couldn't set aside some designated classrooms for packed lunches. Anything is better than eating in the cloakroom :boak:

Well my DCs school (1,500 state comprehensive) has lockers available, year group common rooms, dining room and pantries.

No cloakrooms - but none of them wear coats anyway, whatever the weather! This is partly because of the amount of children on buses - there isn't really time to go back to a locker before getting on the buses, especially children like my DCs who often have to collect a musical instrument as well.

The dining room is the only place you can't eat your own food. Packed lunches can be eaten in the common rooms or outside. Or at your lunchtime activity.

The pantries serve hot food (pizza, toasties, hot posta bowls) and cold food (sandwiches, pasta, salad) and several of these around school. They are open morning break as well.

Sixth formers are the only ones allowed out.

At Ds1's school there used to be lockers but they took them out to save room. This is probably why nobody wears a coat even this week.

david the whole school here have teh same lunch break 40 mins for 1200 students and it is chaos .I think if every chiold ahd hot food well be mayhem .The hall only holds maxium of 200

The school could be discouraging packed lunches so that they have more uptake of school lunches. This would make it easier to negotiate the contract with their caterers.

I know that at my children's schools that it is essential to have 100% uptake, as a choice would mean that no caterer would be interested in providing a healthy and cost-effective lunch.

If the dining area is small then obviously the tables are needed for those with plates and cutlery. I'm surprised though that there isn't a room that could be used for packed lunchers during the colder months.

School lunch length between the sectors is important.

In large comps, it is really common to just have a half-hour lunch break, often with staggered classes to fit everyone in. It means the children have less time to be idle (and misbehave).

In independent schools, it is not unusual to have a 1 - 1.5 hour lunch break, which means they can fit the whole school into a relatively small dining room.

Idleness isn't the main reason for long lunchbreaks in the independent sector, but it is a way of extending the school day to 4.30/5/6pm.

I think most independent school parents would be horrified if their child was stressed out by carrying their possession around and having a prison-style lunch. Part of what they are paying for is for their child to have a comfortable and civilised school experience. That can often mean a three-course lunch, with no time pressure to scoff it down.

At dd1's school they have a two week timetable with 5 periods a day, so 50 lessons per fortnight. Some subjects are on a rota system so you switch every 6 weeks between music / art / drama and food tech / graphics / resistant materials / maybe something else!

I'm a bit as to how 15 sessions a week allows for core subjects (maths, english, science) to have more timetable time than not such important things like ICT and PSCHE (or whatever the letters are!).

Anyway, at dd1's school there are lockers for everyone (combination so no keys to lose) and plenty of indoor seating areas. The old cloakrooms have been converted to social areas, with those metal benches you see at railway stations. So lots of indoor places to sit and chat and eat :)

I'm not surprised you're not happy if there's not enough room for them to sit and eat. They must have real problems with concentration and toilet breaks must be tricky for staff as well as students. In the schools I've worked in there are very few staff toilets , more lesson breaks means more chances to go!

Yes, pickled :). They are allowed to have school lunches in the dining room, cold packed lunch in the common room, or they can go out to Tesco/Greggs/Subway/local kebab shop...

I think their packed lunch rules are petty. I could never get to the bottom of it, when I agreed to my DS's detention. I imagine they don't want pizza in school because it would be hard to dispose of the pizza boxes without going to the big dumpster and they don't want them piled up in the common room, but couldn't actually get the Head of Sixth Form to admit this.

it does but i looked at all schools in the area and it is a similar problem and where we used to ive the unch time faclities are just not big enough.Ds2 used to be dinners but said 30 mins queue 5 to stuff down as ;lunch is 40 mins and thats the whole school of 1200

DD's old school didn't have lockers. Actually they did used to have lockers but they were taken out. I challenged the HT about it but it didn't suit the school so nothing was done. It was typical of the school - that the HT's views were more important than inconvenience to the pupils - and was part of the reason why we and most others left for sixth form.

same here no spaces for packed lunches and hell even dinners struggle to grab a meal and find a seat

how do they fit everything into the time table if they only have 3x 100 min lessons a day?

I thought legally secondary schools were supposed to provide some access to lockers. A lot of schools only allow eating of home bought food outside, but may designate a room for days like today. Some schools are very short of room though. My DCs school doesn't really have enough room for all pupils to eat.
But some of the independent schools subtly overcome this by allowing a their pupils to go and buy food at lunch time from local shops. They also have to carry far more equipment around.

My children are at 3 different independent schools. They all have lockers (one of my DDs has three lockers - books, games, instrument!). They all have very nice dining halls. Mine all have school lunches (compulsory in 2 of the schools), so packed lunch location not an issue for us. I think in the school that has a packed lunch option, they are only allowed to eat cold food in the common room. I know this because DS got a detention for having a pizza delivered and the reason given was hot food outside of the dining room.

The lockers thing is totally normal, but I'd be demanding answers about provision for students with packed lunches - that's absolutely not on - do the LEA and Ofsted know?