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

[fernier]

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

In the two primary schools I've worked In the packed lunches are sat separately, it's easier as in these schools baskets of fresh bread and the jugs of water/juice and cups are left on the table for the hot dinners to help themselves to ,
In the most recent primary school I worked at out of the 225 pupils 211 of them had hot dinners! Just 4 children on the infant sitting and 10 on the second, the meals were 2.05 a day for children and 2.70 a day for teachers, the food was all fresh, cooked on site and delicious too!

i saw a school dinner at the school i used to work at,it was a slice of pizza, pasta without any sauce on it and carrots and a piece of flapjack yum!

Might some of the other mums feel the same? Maybe have a word with your DCs friends' mums to see if they could be 'packed lunch buddies' and sit together to have their lunches so they aren't alone.

I think £10 a week is ok, as with any price, as long as the food supplied is of a good standard.

Don't know why I remember this but when I started primary school the dinners cost £1.75 a week