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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

AIBU to be annoyed about this school  dinner issue?

37 replies

JinglingAllTheWay · 02/12/2011 23:13

Not sure if this is just to be expected or am I justified in being annoyed about this?
It's been driving me up the wall and not sure what can be done next.
The school releases a menu of what will be on it and the dinners go in a 3 week rotation.
DS has a mix of school dinners / packed lunches according to what is on the menu. He has come out more than once telling me he wasn't allowed what he wanted . I've spoken to his teacher and she said she'd investigate. To be fair to her, she has been fab and looked into it and has passes onto dinner ladies as teacher doesn't look after class at lunch time and asked them to keep an eye out.

Although its still happening and apparently the Cook who serves them Tells them what they have to have and they often get no choice. For example, today he wanted sausages but his class had had their allocation and the cook put them away and said the rest had to have some wrap thing. He ate nothing. I asked if he'd eaten his pudding as it was jam sponge and custard which he loves but he said they weren't allowed that and had to have a fruit salad ( left over from yesterday - he didn't have a dinner yesterday as he didn't like the food on offer yesterday including the fruit salad.
He said he could see the sponge on the side but none of them were allowed it... This can't be right can it??
This has happened many times this term and he fact he ate nothing for lunch has really p*ssed me off.

I pay £1.90 a day for dinners for him and they are not having the choice they are supposed to. If he was allowed the actual choice he was meant to he would enjoy the dinners but this is ridiculous!
It's a catering company the school hires so they are not technically school employees, just working at school so to speak but finding it hard to speak to someone from the company to complain.
Maybe an email but not sure what to write without sounding too cross or rude!

Sorry for any errors, am on my phone :)

OP posts:
Kayano · 02/12/2011 23:15

Seems a bit bloody stupid to me Sad

Indaba · 02/12/2011 23:17

As a mother with a long service medal re trying to improve our school lunches....first thing I'd do is get a meeting with the school to determine their expectations.

If they think children are getting a choice, but infact they aren't, then that is something the school must take up with their service provider. Or the service provider has to be more honest and say...there is no choice. Would also get other parents on your side.

Good luck!

Appuskidu · 02/12/2011 23:19

Go to the head-they can liase directly with the catering company. The class teacher will have no dealings with them, I should think.

WeShouldOpenABar · 02/12/2011 23:21

the class probably has a quota for the less healthy foods ie the sausages in the hope that this will spread out the less healthy stuff over the whole class over a week , im sure in fact the same kids are always at the start of the queue to make sure they get the allocation so that doesnt work so much
why not tell your son to be at the top of the queue until you sort it out with the school so he can have his choice

PomBearAtTheGatesOfDoom · 02/12/2011 23:24

How come he can mix packed lunches and school dinners? Here we can only change from one to the other at the beginning of the half term, and have to give notice on the last day of the previous half term at the latest. Dinner money is paid in advance, and must be paid for the week before they can have lunch that week. If they're off for a day later in the week, it can be carried over, but they can't pick and choose which day to have school dinner or packed lunch. It's one or the other and no changing mid-way through.

marriedandwreathedinholly · 02/12/2011 23:27

I'd have a word with the head - they advertise a choice but it isn't available. That's not the offer. The other option of course is to have packed lunch every day - that's what we did due to the amount of spicy and veggie stuff offered at the dc's primary school.

redlac · 02/12/2011 23:28

Your system is exactly the same as my DDs school (wonder if it's the same council). I would speak to the head or contact the school meals service at the council

Pom our school lets the children pay in the morning each day and there are 3 choices one of which is more a packed lunch option

PomBearAtTheGatesOfDoom · 02/12/2011 23:29

OOOO how useful! I wish our school did that! We just can't afford to pay for dinners full time but it would be lovely if they could say have a hot dinner on a particularly cold day for example.

redlac · 02/12/2011 23:31

The bit I like the most is the 3 options are red, green and blue so they use coloured lids off plastic milk bottles :) simple things amuse simple minds

startail · 02/12/2011 23:35

We put money in parent pay online and then the children are perfectly free to have or not have school dinners and get their choice as long as they are in registration.
I think DD1 has had to have what ever was left when we went all over avoiding .
flooded lanes and were ridiculously late.
DD2 is insanely fussy, will eat dinner about once a week. I'd never hear the end of it if she didn't get what she asked for!

festi · 02/12/2011 23:37

my dds school have red cards and green crads withn their names on they make their choice and add them to red or green board, they are collected and sent to the kitchen at registration.

they can chop and change between sandwiches daily. the school do send out letters at the begining of term saying they would preffer money sent in to the office on a monday, so effectivly they should have a weeks notice of school dinners or packed lunches but no one really pays attention to this, if you want a dinner most parents pay daily. the school are not pushy about this and it seems to work.
I would have thought they have loads of dinner money debt this way, But has never seemed an issue at our school and belive me if you dont pay up for anything else other than dinners they are on you at any given oppertunity.

ddubsgirl · 02/12/2011 23:41

ahhh see most classes get asked what they want,so they cook that number but by lunch time alot will change their minds so later classes dont get what they asked for,this is why i stopped mine from having dinners,its £2.10 here for utter crap!

zipzap · 02/12/2011 23:50

We get a menu sent home on a monday with meat, veg and jacket potato options on for each day. They all have the same desert/fruit and veggies regardless of the option chosen. You choose which option you want for each day - or none at all if you're sending in a packed lunch, then send in the money by weds am ready for the next day. There's not a kitchen on site, they're brought from a central location by a catering service. But at least it means each child chooses the food they want to eat (albeit a week in advance).

Definitely think it is worth bringing up with the head as it's wrong if they are rationing the popular things as I'm guessing lots of kids will end up like yours and not bothering to eat anything if the option they lime isn't available whilst you're happily thinking he will have had the meal that you've paid for.

Mind you look on the bright side - saw an article in the paper today - apparently in France they are banning having veggie options for school meals ( and I think hospitals, prisons etc) as it is unpatriotic and French people have a duty to eat meat to support French agriculture. Oh and you're not allowed to take in packed lunch either if you thought you'd get around it that way ! :o

JjingleBeanplusPudalltheway · 03/12/2011 00:17

Yanbu that would really --fuck me off-- bother me.

Ds is free school dinners, his school offers, 2 hot choices and a 'pack lunch' every day which is fantastic because it means there's always something he likes and we just collect the correct ticket and put it in the box. And also after dds birthday he asked for a home pack lunch as we had cake left over, all we had to do was again collect the correct ticket.

If he ever said he wasn't eating I'd possibly stress myself out incredibly, but I agree contact the head

ddubsgirl · 03/12/2011 00:23

i do also think its wrong that dessert is severed same time as main meal,so most kids eat that 1st and ditch the rest :(
my dd1 had water poured over his dinner 1 day and was told tough nothing else to have,so he went hungry,if they called me i could have brought down a sandwich,and because pud is severed at same time,he whole meal was ruined.

randommoment · 03/12/2011 00:24

The school dinner providers are in breach of contract. End of. Raise it with the head. Indaba has said it all very well.

Original poster
JinglingAllTheWay · 03/12/2011 07:52

thanks for all the advice. The school is flexible on dinners iand yOure allowed to order on the day if you want, as long as you pay on the day.

Don't want to name and shame company but I think it may be same as what someone described above as choices were similar!

OP posts:
mycatoscar · 03/12/2011 08:38

This used to happen at my dd's school and because so many people complained they introduced a new system which seems to work well. When the children arrive at school they look at the menu and make a choice according to colour, then they get given a wrist band in that colour to wear until lunch time. The numbers of each colour are sent to the kitchens and the cook ensures there is enough of each dish to serve to the children who chose it. It's great for the children who get their choice, good for me as a I feel u get my money's worth and better for the kitchen as less waste produced.

I think the problems in a lot of schools are that the kitchen make set amounts of each dish without knowing who will choose what and then the last kids in the queue get whatever is left over.

You need to complain to the head, if enough people do this he or she will have to tackle the problem with the kitchen.

pigletmania · 03/12/2011 08:42

No it can't be right at all. I would complain to the head, this is not acceptable. You are paying a lot of money for him to have a certain lunch of his choosing, its their fault if they bugger up the numbers and do not have enough. From now on until its sorted out I would send him in with packed lunch and tell him that you will do his favourite for dinner.

SoupDragon · 03/12/2011 08:45

PomBearAtTheGatesOfDoom, not every school uses the same system as yours.

Before ParentPay was introduced at ours you could pay and choose on a weekly basis - mine always had packed lunch whenever Indian Day came up on the rotation. Now you can pick and close what you want on a daily basis, no advance notice required.

I think that sometimes at the school the children can't choose the veggie option if they are not veggie - I guess to stop it running out if too many have chosen it earlier on in the lunch session. The situation in the OP seems completely dumb.

pigletmania · 03/12/2011 08:47

DD Infant school is very flixible you can pick and choose each week when your child has a hot lunch. I don't buy them because dd is a very faddy eater and will leave most of it, meaning £2.10 down the drain, so she gets sent in with packed lunch.

AmberLeaf · 03/12/2011 08:50

This is why I said on the infamous 'bread and butter' thread that you cant rely on school dinners as a main meal!

My eldest is 15 and we have had this issue since he was in YR.

Not being allowed stuff because they have to save it for the next sitting, I dont even mean a particular meal option, but vegetables for example.

'No you cant have any peas, we're saving them for Y6'

Privatisation sucks, deffo speak to the head.

MrsSchadenfreude · 03/12/2011 08:55

We stopped our two having school lunches in UK as they were both told on several occasions - wrongly - that we hadn't paid and would have to go without or wait until the end of lunchtime and have anything that was left. Shock This happened quite a lot - not just with us, but with other families too, so we went back to packed lunch.

We're now in France and school lunch for DD2 would cost 10 euros a day, so she has packed lunch instead.

WhoopsyLa · 03/12/2011 08:55

Ooh I would be hopping! Poor little thing....it's this kind of thing that really confuses them! The school cook needs to make more of things and have less choice. That will be the only way of mending this.

pigletmania · 03/12/2011 09:34

In my day at primary school, there used to be one choice, one for veggies and one for the meat eaters.