Secondary school lunches

[SwanUppmanship]

My DC will be going to secondary next year. I was wondering roughly how much stuff costs in their school canteen. The state school my child is going to says they cap spending at £7.50 per day! Although you can change that. So how much do your kids spend? How much is the main meal and pudding deal? Will it be mean to send him with just money for lunch and an apple and a cereal bar for break?

Look at the school website...DDs has the menu on there.

Its cheaper for a meal there than the primary school next door (£2ish). DD can't ve bothered to queue so takes packed lunch.

Round my way they usually do a hot plated main, pudding and drink for a set price (I think it's about £2.80). However they also do a range of fast serve counter things (eg pizza slice) for £2 then other snacks and drinks at extra.

Might be worth giving a fixed price per week and they then need to plan out what they spend. Eg if they do a lunch club they may be better spending more on the fast serve counter so they can race to the club, then on other days they have the meal deal rate as they have more time.

Where we are, it's £3.30 for a hot meal deal and slightly less if they choose a sandwich/baguette/pasta pot deal with a fruit or yogurt option.

I have the spending capped at £5 but my son takes a packed lunch 2/3 times a week anyway if he doesn't fancy what's on offer.

There's a breakfast menu and they also do paninis, hot dogs, pizza slices at break.
The novelty soon wore off with these.

I send a selection of fruit, cereal bar, brioche, mini cheddars, pretzels etc for snack time. They don't eat lunch until 1:30pm so needs something to keep him going.

On packed lunch days he might just spend 80p on a flapjack or doughnut.

2.60 at dd school for a hot main and pudding.

My kids have a monthly allowance for lunches - £5 a week covers one proper lunch and a cakes or waffles on a couple of other days . They budget and I make them packed lunches the other days

£3-£4 a day here (midlands) for secondary school girl. Sometimes she would spend under £2 as she didn't like what was offered so just bought a snack, now she takes a packed lunch anyway.

Most schools will have a fixed price meal deal option so kids can get a basic meal fairly cheaply, ours was about £2.80.

Thank you all!
@BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz your idea of a weekly budget makes a lot of sense to me. There's a lot of clubs etc so he'll probably want to rush through lunch anyway!

Also if he does have a budget he can help stretch it by taking snacks from home to supplement it to make it go further.

I think ours are about £2.50 for a meal deal and then options for pizza, jacket potatoes, take away boxes and puddings/snacks.

In Y7 we loaded their card with £25 for the week for the first few weeks so that while everyone was finding their feet they could choose different options and try different things. After the first few weeks it settled down to around £3.50 a day when the novelty of queuing for snacks at break time wore off.

While they are getting used to school dinners being very different from primary school (and also trying to fit in with new friendship groups) I would try to be a little bit generous if you can but chat generally about budgeting and making sensible choices as it's very easy for DC to just choose pizza and cookies every day.

We've also found that taking a packed lunch was a popular choice for a while depending on clubs and timetable.

My Ds doesn't have a hot lunch as he can't be bothered to queue but assume some people do otherwise there wouldn't be a queue

It’s just under £3 for a meal at DS’s school. It’s mainly the pupils who have free school meals who get a school dinner as so many people cannot afford it. We send DS with a packed lunch.

My DD takes packed lunch every day and gets £10 on her account each month. It was meant to be for hot chocolates or cake but she seems to spend it on fizzy drinks and chicken nuggets

£2.80 a day for mine.

At my kids secondary school, you can buy a lunch for between £2-£4 depending on what they buy. No cash, you top up online.

Both my kids got fed up of long queues with short lunch breaks, meaning they often had to rush their food, not finish and had nowhere to sit as it was so busy. I hear the same from other kids at other schools.

Within a few weeks of starting year 7, they started to take food from home instead. My oldest has finished at the school but my youngest prefers to have a good breakfast, take some snacks for school and have lunch when she gets home. She’s in year 9 and eats in the playground with friends.

I gave mine money each month, they chose to buy ingredients and make packed lunches then spend the rest on clothes, make up, trips out and alcohol

My daughters have £6 a week each. DD1 will generally buy 2 lunches with that and have 3 pack lunch days. DD2 will generally buy 1 lunch and a lot of snacks! Then take lunch in 4 days.

It's about £2.50 for a meal deal, but beware - my child developed a very expensive flavoured water habit. I now buy the flavoured water from Amazon at less than half the school price, and she takes a bottle in to school. It's an environmental nightmare, but at least now not also an economic one.