FSM-has your school changed to vouchers or are they still doing hampers?

[FlatteredRhubardFool]

My school have said once they chose hampers then they had to stick to them but this doesn't seem the case looking at the gov.uk page.
Secondary is doing the edenred vouchers but primary is hampers to collect.

I'm not too bothered really but I would be if the schools were doing it the other way round as I can't collect the hamper.
How is everyone else getting on after all the hooha a couple of weeks ago?

Bump

My dd’s primary has switched to vouchers. It did look like that was what was planned from the beginning this time. But thanks to social media and the papers a lot of people didn’t bother to pick up their hampers last week, so the change may have been accelerated.

I would have thought that vouchers were easier for schools to send out rather than having to make up hampers and either get parents to collect or arrange delivery. There certainly wasn't £15 of food in the one we got even though the school added extras like biscuits and crisps. It was pretty good to be fair but they aren't worth what they are supposed to be worth.

My ds primary is meant to be switching to vouchers this week but not heard anything yet

DDs school are switching to vouchers but I cant complain about the hamper we received, it was enormous!

DS1s school decided to carry on serving food to the kids on site (albeit with a very limited menu), vouchers for everyone else.

We've had vouchers all along

Our school is still doing hampers as I saw them being sorted out today.

School my DCs go to are providing hampers, because they want to be entirely sure they can say they provided food for their children.

It's hampers here and volunteers including myself are dropping them off if families don't have transport. They are pretty generous and we are including a couple of family meals and a recipe card on top of cereal, milk, 2 x bread, spread, jam plus 5 lunches with meal plan and instructions.

The secondary school aged ones have extra bread too

There was some consultation locally and it was felt that some children may benefit from the extra money, they caught people selling the vouchers on back in the first wave.

• not benefit!

They are definitely allowed to change but I believe they have improved the hamper quite a bit now.

School I teach at is sending out weekly supermarket food boxes - they get delivered so there's no collection necessary. Decision was made to continue doing this because of the awfulness of the Edenred voucher system last time; the headteacher was regularly up between 2am and 4am trying to get the vouchers. Even then, there were too many occasions when the vouchers didn't work when families tried to redeem them. In terms of staff wellbeing and guaranteeing provision of food, food boxes came out on top. I believe families are invited to choose between a number of different £20* boxes/suppliers.

*topped up by the school to this amount.

Ds school did one week of hampers and then switched back to
Vouchers.

It will be interesting to see what's in it this week. I'll be very grateful of whatever it is as my next two supermarket deliveries have been cancelled due to covid so my next delivery is not until the 2nd February. I'm cev so going to the shops isn't an option. I can see that some pupils may benefit more from actual food than vouchers and schools will be best placed to make that decision. My vouchers just go towards the weekly shop and I don't smoke or drink so they definitely do go on food. Other families sadly might have different priorities.

Hampers but they are annoying as half the stuff my kids won’t eat, and things like tuna (we are vegetarian so that went to the cat 😏)

Well, I got mine today. Grated cheese wrapped in cling film that's use by tomorrow. 1/3 of a cucumber, cherry tomatoes, apples, bananas, a tin of baked beans, 2 tiny slices of cake with a use by date of tomorrow, a loaf of pre-frozen bread that's use by Sunday, 6 eggs, a jar of pasta sauce, a mini pizza, a bag of pasta, a packet of biscuits, portion packs of margarine, cereal and milk (use by Sunday).

That's no good OP I would complain to your school.

A lovely rotten apple too 😔