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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To think £10 a week is a bit steep for school dinners?

80 replies

fernier · 07/07/2011 10:39

We pay £10 a week for school dinners per child (2 currently in school 2 more to go). They can have packed lunches but the school have made this so unpleasant (they have to sit at a different table we live in an area where almost all the children get free school meals so there are literally a handful of children with packed lunches sitting alone at one side of the hall) they also have a very restrictive list of what you can put in a lunchbox even though the school dinners actually contain alot of it.

Examples of meals this week are pasta with tomato sauce, jelly. Or fish fingers mashed potato and broccoli.

Aibu to think that these meals made in large quantities and I'm guessing not using exactly top notch ingredients are not worth £10 a week?

Also Aibu to think that making packed lunches so miserable that parents feel forced into paying for school dinners even when they cant really afford it is not on?

I am actually at the point of complaining about the quality of the meals and/or the treatments of those with packed lunches....and I never complain about anything Shock

OP posts:
PatriciaHolm · 07/07/2011 12:53

Same cost here, for fresh meals cooked on the premises; our school is, rightly, proud of its kitchen and it's staff. Their raisin cookies (sweetened with juice) are wonderful ;-)

£2 for a 2 course cooked meal is good value. Of course against the cost of a ham sandwich, apple, biscuit from home, you can provide that much cheaper; but you aren't paying the overheads a school has. Quite frankly I'm happy to pay to avoid having to make two lots of sarnies every day! Plus DS, especially, eats a great variety of food at school that he gets fussy about at home (e.g. curry).

Raahh · 07/07/2011 12:56

And (my other bugbear re the spoons)- when i send them to school with plastic ones, they always come home. If i have need to send metal ones, they never do....funny thatHmm!

My dc are desperate to go on school dinners (they did for a couple of days whilst I was in hospital having dd2). But it is just too much out of the budget. Although, as dh was made redundant earlier this year, we may be eligible for free ones soon anyway.Sad.

mumeeee · 07/07/2011 12:56

£10 a week sounds normal to me, That is only £2 a day, It is also normal to for packed lunch kids to sit at a differnt table,

Katisha · 07/07/2011 12:59

Much as I would love to stop making sandwiches, DSs wouldn't get value out of school dinners due to problems with egg.

Also, it seems the choices run out quite early - on the occasions we have given it a go, the milk has run out before the end of the queue, or the non-egg-related dish etc etc.

And frankly they are never going to eat coleslaw, vegetable medleys, and all the other "healthy menu" stuff so beloved of ofsted.

So sandwiches it is.

TheOriginalFAB · 07/07/2011 13:01

I currently pay £2 a day for 3 children and when my oldest child started having dinners in year 1 (now year 5) it was £1.80 a day. It is going up to £2.10 in September. Mine will be going back to packed lunches. The other day Dd had 1 roast potato, 5 carrots and much else - was meant to be a roast dinner. When the cook did a whole school picnic the children got a bread roll, 1 sausage, some carrot and a piece of cucumber with a cookie for afters. It seems to happen quite a lot that the children don't get what is on the menu.

Sidge · 07/07/2011 13:01

Same cost here, 2 pounds a day per child. When DD3 starts school in September it would cost me 80-odd pounds a month for school dinners for 2 of them and I can feed all 5 of us lunch each day for that!

Luckily the school only has a "no sweets or chocolate" rule for lunchboxes. I wouldn't accept the criteria laid out by the OPs school and would be challenging the HT and governors to justify their reasons for such restrictions.

kittybuttoon · 07/07/2011 13:02

Whatever is the rationale for the silly rules about not integrating packed-lunch kids with the others? And refusing to provide them with spoons, even though they have spoons available? And not allowing them to use a fork to eat their salad? And refusing access to a bin!

Some idiot must have dreamed up these bizarre practices - and someone else must be policing them. So what on EARTH do these people tell the children, when the children ask what the justification is?

Raahh · 07/07/2011 13:09

Our school has been named a green school or something,[there's a flag!) due to recycling and stuff. Of ourse it helps that the packed lunch kids don't fill up the bins with non- recycleble plasticGrin

Raahh · 07/07/2011 13:10

rubbish spelling. sorryBlush

RustyBear · 07/07/2011 13:11

The rules may be imposed by the school dinner company, not the school itself - at our school all the cutlery etc belongs to the company - whether or not kids are allowed to borrow tends to depend on the cook we have at the time - some are great, others sadly are not. But the LA has a contract with the company and the only alternative is for the school to do the whole thing themselves, which would be a major undertaking

coccyx · 07/07/2011 13:18

Not much nutritional value in a jelly!!

Fizzylemonade · 07/07/2011 13:29

£1.65 here for reception up to year 2, years 3-6 is £1.85. Our school has some kind of award for healthy eating. We are in Yorkshire.

Packed lunched children sit amongst the school dinner children. We have a lunch box policy of no crisps or solid chocolate but that is about it. All waste from the packed lunch comes home so we can see what they are or are not eating.

My two have 2 packed lunches a week and 3 school dinners. We can choose how many dinners they have on the Monday of each week depending on what is on the menu. I just do the blanket policy of a school dinner Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

OP - I think the packed lunch children are literally being bullied into having a school dinner at your school.

cuteboots · 07/07/2011 13:34

I pay £2 per days and the meals are lovely. It also means I can ensure my son is getting one proper meal a day. I think it would cost you more than £2 to provide a meal yourself and also with the rising cost of food I think its a resonable price. They also have different themed meals if the classes are covering a specific country or topic i.e Chines/Indian etc etc.

ddubsgirl · 07/07/2011 13:34

dinners here are £2.10 a day,kids arent allowed to tip rubbish in the bins as kids were caught throwing food away,so it stays in the lunch box so parents can see what they have & havent eaten.

JemimaMuddledUp · 07/07/2011 13:39

Ours is £1.85 a day, rising to £1.90 a day in September. I have 3 DC at school so it will cost me £28.50 a week. However I do think it is worth it, the food is pretty good (including locally sourced ingredients such as meat, eggs, veg etc) and all 3 of mine have seconds or even thirds if they can so definitely get their money's worth!

vogonmothership · 07/07/2011 13:40

We are really lucky, £2.20 here (lincs) but the food is fabulous, interesting and locally sourced - we are told which butcher, baker and local veg stall it comes from. There are 3 options a day and you can have as many days as you like.
we mix and match with pack ups - no lunch police

biddysmama · 07/07/2011 13:40

if the school are telling what you can and cant put in packed lunches then they probably have healthy school status which they can lose if children fetch junk/sugary food in their packed lunch. ds has a controlled diet so he is on packed lunch so i dont know how much they are here but £10 sounds fair enough really, £2 a day for drinks,main meal,pudding?

Hulababy · 07/07/2011 13:45

£1.90 a day at the infant school I work at. Cost includes all ingredients, power, staffing, etc. Doesn't seem too bad tbh.

Where I work the dinners don't seem too bad, although not actually eaten in there.

But if you have more than one child it would add up I guess. Amd yes you can do a packed lunch cheaper, but some people like the conveience school dinners bring.

Our packed lunches sit in a classroom to eat, not inthe hall with school dinners. We simply can't fit everyone in, nor is there enoguh time to get all 270 children through on a rota if they all use the hall. I wouldn't say it was unpleasant though - our packed lunch children just it and chat to one another.

DD's prep school has compulsary school dinners (no packed lunch option) and cost is included in school fees. I have eaten there and dinners are pretty good.

wfrances · 07/07/2011 13:47

why dont you bring them home for lunch.
my dd didnt want to take a packed lunch like her brothers and i wasnt going to give her £2.50 a day for food when she has a damn good meal at home,besides the other 3 dc would want £2.50 -£10 a day -yipes
so she comes home and has beans/toast or soup and a roll ect..(they are in secondary school,and the school is very close )
but i would make your point to them as its not unfounded.
good luck

berylmuspratt · 07/07/2011 13:54

Our school dinners are £9 per week, the children who take in sandwiches and the children who have dinners all sit together. Tbh my son has sandwiches and I probably spend more than £1.80 per day on them. I think if your child is eating full meals, £10 per week is reasonable. However, if like, some of the children in our school they are eating one slice of pizza and some ice cream for lunch it isn't !!

boolifooli · 07/07/2011 13:55

The reason we like them to take their wrappers etc home is so the parents can see what they have eaten. I frequently intercept children tipping mums homemade tuna pasta salad into the bin.

valiumredhead · 07/07/2011 13:56

curry so everyone has to bring packed lunches, no dinners at all? That seems such a shame Sad

£2 per day here and they cook on the premises, even make their own bread. Ds does much better having a cooked meal in the day so I am happy to pay it.

I worked out that it cost the same amount for him to take in packed lunches.

jubilee10 · 07/07/2011 14:24

"And frankly they are never going to eat coleslaw, vegetable medleys, and all the other "healthy menu" stuff so beloved of ofsted.

So sandwiches it is."

If that's the parents attitude then no, I don't suppose they will. Ds3, 5, loves coleslaw and vegetables. He has school dinners every day and eats the lot. They are really good meals though.

Katisha · 07/07/2011 14:26

It's not an "attitude". It's reality.
they will eat veg, but separate.

how lovely for you. Oh well.

TheFalcon · 07/07/2011 14:32

It was about £1.50 a day when I was last at school over 15 years ago. Some kids used to get £3 a day from their parents which I thought was insane.

That was secondary school though.

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