Free school meals

[mutznutz]

I was just thinking. With so many Government and Council cutbacks, isn't it about time they stopped providing free school meals that cost untold millions of pounds to provide?

I mean we're already given child benefit to help with the cost of our children. Also, as long as you're feeding your child properly at home, what's wrong with providing a fairly inexpensive packed lunch if you can't afford to buy them a hot one? (not that they are particularly 'hot' nowdays)

Plus, if parents cant afford to feed their children when they go to school...how do they manage at weekends and during the 13wks holidays they get per year?

Then there are the parents who earn just above the threshold and cannot afford school meals...their kids would have a packed lunch so why not everyone?

actually I'd advise she reads the thread - and then she may read some of the explanations.

Then she may realise that many people don't "neglect" their children - but simply can't afford to feed them 3 meals a day.

If you take money out of the child benefit of those who are doing their damn hardest but still can't manage to provide those lunches then it only has a knock on effect. For me £130 a month is over half my entire monthly shopping budget it would cripple me. My children would still be fed, probably on more value brands - but I'd go back to how I was before I swallowed my pride and started claiming them in the first place - living on less one meal a day (and often not even a proper "meal".

The more feckless parents would simply give their children less at home and no-one would be any better off.

if my cloest friends knew how poorly I eat myself to ensure my children at least get a decent breakfast and dinner (and a "passable" lunch in the school holidays) and get to do other "normal" stuff like school trips and the like they'd come down on me like a ton of bricks

Though I'm better now than when I proudly decided not to claim the FSM's. - I do at least have a sandwich with a decent filling a day

she qualifies for FSM's and goes on 2 overseas holidays a year??

have you asked her mow much debt she got into do facilitate that??

And if she swears blind she doesn't have any, it wasn't paid for my someone else and she's not getting cash in hand on the side - then please ask her how she does it - as I'd love to know.

I have no idea how so many parents can buy their kids ice creams from the van outside the school for £1.50 a throw...or why according to some of them they 'wouldn't be seen dead buying second hand clothes' or how they dispose of clothes rather than sew them..or how they generally have very nice TVs and game consoles...but it seems high or low income many people do.

Yabvu, and very ignorant of just how awful some childrens' lives are. So no, let's not take a meal away from them.

No-one has suggested taking a meal away from them to my knowledge anyway...though I admit it's a fairly long thread.

Big fat to all the stereotypical council estate remarks on this thread

And no I don't think school meals should be stopped

I did only get to pg 3

I worked in a very deprived school before stopping cause of dd,and admit I get a little over protective at times so prob just jumped in too quickly.

hey ho. Anyhow, I do once in a blue moon buy my DS's ice creams from the van (not outside the school - usually at the park). I don't have a TV (well I do - but it's not ine - it's the LL's). And my DS's have a Wii (broken). I very very rarely buy my DS's 2nd hand clothes (but that's mostly because they're tally and skinny - god knows why the amount of food they put away ) and I can never find anything in the charity shops to fit them . (I do buy myself 2nd hand stuff though)

I don't sew my DS's clothes for 2 reasons.

1. I can't sew - despite my mother making all my clothes when I was very young and her very valiant attempts to teach me, plus lessons at school - sewing a button back on is about as far as my needlwork goes

1. I was one of those children with "darned" clothes as a child. It resulted in vast amounts of bullying and teasing because of it. I would go hungry for a very long time before I allowed them to go through what I went through.

oh yes - that's how I afford some of this stuff - I go without so they don't.

Bitching the point is for example...you would learn to sew if you have to. A lot of parents wont mend a seam on a pair of school trousers "Cos they're only £4 in Asda"...Ironically that's the cost of two school meals here.

heard it all before ...

no - I wouldn't - I've been in the position where I "had" to - and I just can't do it. (I even went to a sewing class years ago as I was convinced if I had proper teaching I could do it). It appears to be one of those things that I just can't do.

There are very few things that have alluded me through life so far - but sewing is one of them

If the seam comes lose on my DS's school uniform they either wear them until they've grown and need new ones - or they're just a pair of trousers down.

DS1 currently has just one school jumper (with an extremely frayed and tatty sleeve end - f*ck knows what he's done to it to get like that). He knows it's got to see him through until the end of the school year (unless he has a magical growth spurt) when I get his and the other DS's new uniforms.

Nothing gets replaced here until it HAS to be because there's no choice (it's either totally fallen to pieces or they've grown)

and if I miracuously did suddenly manage to find an ability to sew from somewhere - I still wouldn't send my DS's out of the house in clothes that had been darned back together - for the 2nd reason I gave.

It's the same reason I pay out for the logoed school uniforms - the knock on effect to my self esteem from years of bullying about it took me years to recover from. Bullying policies in schools may have tightened these days - but they're not infallable - and they don't stop bullying outside of school and hell would freeze over before I risked them suffering the same as I did.

biching - its a strange world. i have sent my children to school in patched uniforms and don't buy them logoed uniforms unless they are compulsory because i don't want to spoil them.

it never occurred to me that they might be bullied as a result

one of my favourite things about mumsnet is it gives you another perspective

dreaming - they probably won't be I'm sure in schools things have vastly improved with regards to bullying and teasing.

But those memories of my school days have long outlasted my the clothes my mum patched up. I've managed to shake most of the self esteem issues and the likes that years of bullying left me with - but some things I just can't let go of/shake off - and that is one of them.

www.magicbreakfast.com/schools

there is now a charity in the uk that provides free breakfasts for children in primary schools where over 50% of the pupils are eligible for free school dinners.

they give them breakfast cos it's a long time til lunch when you've not had anything to eat at home before you came to school. imagine that child's life if they weren't getting a free school lunch either. one meal a day. in the evening. after a full day at school.

OP YABVVVU!

As someone who used to benefit from free school meals reading this thread is making my blood boil!!!

mutznutz you obviously have no idea what it is like to grow up as a child with poor parents! My father worked as a bricklayer, and with construction having the peaks and troughs (dips especially in times of recession), I think it was only fair that i received FSM to take the burden off my parents financially (who as an aside were struggling with mortgage payments as they benefitted from Maggies right to buy scheme...).

Fortunately I have been quite successful in life and for the time being money is not a worry. I do not begrudge paying taxes to help the more poor a vulnerable in society. I think the people who can afford to should pay more.

I appear to be middle class to the outside world now, and it shocks me the bigoted attitudes people show towards poorer people and people who live on council estates. Though I do love it letting this people rant and then letting them know I was once one of the people they moan about .

If mutznutz is not an old fave with a new name I'll eat my hat

Rimsky Thanks for your contribution but to be fair I do know what it's like. I was the youngest of 5 with a SAHM and a Dad who did a manual job at Fords...yet they put our food before toys/telephone/TV/Holidays/new clothes/luxuries etc...

The fact remains that parents are already being paid by the Government to feed their kids. If those parents are not spending the money on food for their kids, I don't see why the Gov should then pay again by way of FSM.

I really do think it's much fairer now to have the money (or a contribution) taken directly from their Child Benefit to pay for the school meals...as the Gov are trying to cut back.

noddy You'd better get the Ketchup out then cos I've only been a Mumsnetter since just before New Year's eve

You do sound familiar though...surely theres not many with your interesting views ...well I hope not anyway

I've hope you've read that crystal ball of yours well enough to see into your future - at least as far as when your DC's leave school. I can tell you from experience it's one hell of a fall from the pedestal to the ground - and I'd already done a bungee jump and hauled my way part of the way back up before I fell crashing to the ground - fuck it hurt