AIBU to be annoyed about this school dinner issue?

[JinglingAllTheWay]

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 - do bring this up with the Headteacher or Deputy and if any other parents are having issues group up together and put a well reasoned discussion together on what is and what is not working.

Do you have any committees within the school who meet to discuss such issues?

We had similar issues at our school and after the subject was raised and it was identified that it wasn't just one unhappy mum and child then an investigation was done.

School dinners were closely monitored for a few weeks and then a meeting with the provider set up. In the end the school opted to change provider and the parents were involved with the staff at the school to pick and work with them on what the school wanted.

Did you know ~ random fact of the day ~ that schools who uptake academy status are not obliged to follow the healthy eating laid out by the governemnt? they can sell any old crap to turn a profit!

At our school the children choose what they want at registration and they are then given a coloured wrist band indicating their choice. The kitchen staff know how much to cook of what items, the children can't change their mind and bugger the numbers up and it speeds things up at lunchtime. Perfect solution IMO.

That sounds like an ideal solution, Daisy.

Otherwise, it would be very unfair on the class who comes last and never gets any sausages. Or if they cooked enough to provide every child in the school with a full choice, they would throwing horrendous amounts of food away at the end of the day, which is also unsatisfactory.

Good idea Daisy, the system needs to be changed in that school

yanbu.

in our school, the kids choose one of the two options during the register.

Red or green. The dinner ladies then cook the right number of red and green lunches (always cooked freshly in the morning).

the kids then get a little red or green sticker on their jumper.

sorted.

It's easy really.

We have the wristband system too. It seems to work really well. I just had a look at the menu and it appears to be provided by a company called ISS Education (in case you're interested).

Do you think I could suggest this type of system to the head? Not that he is likely to listen to me but maybe if I got other parents involved too?

Wristbands seem like a logical idea to me

We used to have the opposite problem when the dses were at junior school - the year six kids went in first, then the other years took it in turn to go second, third and fourth, and if you weren't first or second, the chances were that, by the time you got there, there was no choice of food left, because the popular choices had all gone.

Maybe your dc's school is trying to make sure that there is something of everything for each of the classes, so they don't end up with whole classes/year groups getting no choice.

That said, I would not be happy about this either.

I know that dd who is in primary one have to let the teacher know first thing in the morning what coloured tray she wants so I'm guessing they would have a rough idea of how many too cook for. Do ou know if it is sub-contracted or a council run kitchen jingle?

I think if you have a child who won't try other options at all then you would be better off giving him packed lunch every day. I think school dinners works better for children who are prepared to try other types of food than their favourites.

SDTG - they do it the other way round at my DS's school - YR are first sitting, Y1 & Y2 second sitting, Y3 & Y3 thrid sitting, Y5 & Y6 last sitting. By the time Y5 & Y6 get in there - ther's bugger all left. They are ekeing out the potatoes, so where YR will get 3/4, Y5 & Y6 will only get 2/3, not enough veg left, sometimes only Veggie option left.

It's shit. And this isn't even an outside catering company - it's done on site by the school cook.

I end up sending DS1 with half a packed lunch on top, even though he gets free school dinners, because the portions are timy for last sitting.