to think the new free school meals for all KS1 children is a ridiculous idea?

[Flexibilityiskey]

I just don't see the rational behind it, when benefits are being cut to the bone, why give free school meals to people who don't need them? Yes it may benefit the odd family but there will be loads who just don't need free meals, and at what cost? My DS's school will have to build a new kitchen as they currently don't have the facility to provide hot meals. There must be loads of schools with similar issues. Add to that the cost of feeding all the children in KS1 for each school year, the cost must run into millions. Surely the money could be better spent being targeted at those who genuinely need it or am I missing something?

Obviously if it's sent in from a parent it's the lunchbox from hell causing the nation's obesity epidemic.

Oh yes.

They wouldn't call it cheese food and ham trimmings would they

And the very reason this initiative is needed

I think it's a brilliant plan for teachers like myself who have to sneak snacks in for the criminally undernourished kids who are borderline FSM, or whose parents cannot / will not take them up. I maintain a fruit bowl and cereal bar bag in my classroom just for them. Unfortunately, the need goes much further than KS1. I still do it for my Year 5 class.

Any teacher knows that a kid who has sat down to a meal and eaten enough will be much better behaved in the afternoon. And frankly, a lot of "Oh, it's terrible quality, I won't let my darling eat that muck" is nonsense. ANY school dinner, be it reformed chicken breast with chips or a burger, is warm, and better than the packet of quavers that consisted of the meal one of mine brought to the school the other day. There is always fruit and salad on offer, and vital carbs and protein, even if it isn't from Waitrose. Please bear in mind that some of the kids go home to a sandwich or less.

And yes, I know apples cost tuppence and feckless parent, etc etc. But i'd just much rather they eat something. I don't mind helping pay for it at all. If you see my pupils sharing their snacks at playtime, you would see that they wouldn't mind either. If you see a hungry kid, you feed them, you don't say,"Oh, but it's a twizzler! And I am paying for it!"

My one worry is that it removes the link between FSM, and the various help schools got to help prop up groups of students, which I think might be intended..........

It's not about money. It's about the children not having to be dependent on parents for a good meal. Just like child benefit was about women not being dependent on the father for cash.

Erm they don't touch the salad bar let's be honest and the threshold for fsm should simply be extended.

There is no need for all kids to be fed at great expense food that is no better than many of the packed lunches DC's catering company owning friends like to moan about.

Again that could be covered by expanding the threshold. Rather than feed all kids including those who don't need it and having te quality go down so it's of less benefit than it could be to te children you are talking about?

i think its a stupid idea. Better to raise the threshold of the cut off point for fsm entitlement so it wasnt so ridiculously low so the working poor qualify as well

Children not being dependant on a parent for a meal- wow,just wow!

No wonder this country is in serious shit.

So now when you have kids,feeding them is just an optional extra.

Sorry that's bollocks.The maj can and should feed their children properly.It's not the tax payers job.

Those that can't should get help,proper help.

I would like to know what the nutritional standards are that only 1% of packed lunches are meeting, frankly. My daughter and pretty much all her friends get something along the lines of a sandwich (ham, chicken, cheese, marmite and cream cheese, salami, egg mayo, tuna etc - all savoury, there is a small minority, like one family in thirty or forty, sending jam/nutella sandwiches and most are sending brown bread). They all seem to have yoghurt and/or a bit of cheese or milk. They all seem to have fruit and/or veg. They all seem to have occasional sweet treats, like maybe a small fairy cake or dried fruit snack once or twice a week. What on earth is wrong with this kind of thing? Some people send pasta with cheese and pesto, some send rice and dal and stuff. Some send baked beans or soup in a flask. I can't see what's wrong with any of that, though obviously baked beans are a bit salty for every day. It's all good, filling, nutritious food. I am in school and help on trips a lot and I see what they eat.

It's not a posh school. It is a very ordinary primary with not particularly stellar results and a less advantaged intake than the vast majority of the other local schools.

I know there are children who get sent in with wholly inappropriate lunches, but from my experience they are in a tiny tiny tiny minority and generally school talks to the parents and it's OK. When it's not OK, the children are offered stuff from the meal counter anyway (cheese sandwich and apple or something as there is usually something like this available). A cheese sandwich and an apple is a perfectly OK lunch for a primary aged child and most schools would be able to provide something similar in cases of genuine need.

The salad bar in our school is hammered! It has pasta salad, homemade slaw, the usual, buckets of cucumber, carrot batons, hummus, bread and so on, and it's being constantly refilled. The kids eat salad in preference to cooked veg most of the time, and the dinner ladies ensure that they get either the veg or the salad in two portions.

I eat in our canteen every day, in my primary, and I can honestly say that every single child who goes home and complains about the food has wolfed it down in 3 seconds before running off to play.

You do know they say they didn't eat anything so they get a snack, right?

Even extending the threshold would still miss out the parents who a) don't give a monkeys and b) can't read / write / speak the language, and where we live, that's a lot. And it would still miss out our field and shift workers, who earn enough, but sleep through the times the kid is making their own (terrible) packed lunch, or leaving it to the (terrible) childminder.

What this will actually mean that schools will not be able to request extra funding for FSM pupils at primary level now

YANBU.

I love all four us sitting down to a home cooked meal round the table in the evening. Sharing food and hearing about everyone's day is one of the favourite parts of mine. The dc also learn good table manners and through trying lots of foods both now eat a wide variety of food.

Either they'll probably have a snacky tea while dh and I have a hot meal or they'll have two main meals, which I don't think builds good eating habits.

Also dd2 has severe allergies to milk, eggs and nuts and so will probably be the only one in the class unable to have a hot lunch - making her feel even more isolated!

Bloody short-sighted myopic policy. Make the FSM net wider and more anonymous so no kid is singled out as having them.

My dc come home every day saying they don't have to pick the veg so don't(I checked and they don't), they can choose bread instead and gave bread to replace food that has run out.

I did supply for years and the food waste was dire even in the award winning school dinners school,huge bins of the stuff.

My dc don't have snacks.They finish any uneaten veg/ food in their lunch bag on packed lunch days.

I'd like a big more scrutiny re quality,supervision of veg intake and waste- seeing as we're all paying for this.

Our local authority was one of the pilots for this. There were no problems with enough time or not being able to provide enough meals, it all worked beautifully and the evidence showed a positive impact which is why it's being rolled out nationwide. Just carry on as you are if you don't want to take part but lots of other children will benefit from it.

PandaNot - how did schools manage the logistics ie not enough dining space, kitchens too small to manage

What was the take up like?

I'm curious as the logistics is our main issue at my school. We can only just manage as we are. Increased numbers of school dinners will cause issues, we think anyway. We already have sittings and we already have children with packed lunches not able to sit in the hall (except EYFS)

But the economy is so stretched. The money to pay for this will have to come from somewhere.

It's a question of priorities. This seems like a sledgehammer to crack the nut of a few parents who cannot feed their children. Giving every child a free lunch is a phenomenal waste of money (a general election voter pleaser?) when the NHS, the welfare system, the healthcare system is so underfunded.

there have been times in my life when we had FSM, we don't need them now thankfully.

See I'm with Retro on this one; the onus should be on making crap parents step up, not doing the equivalent of opening a soup kitchen.

I give my children lunch so as to balance what we are eating for dinner. I just wouldn't want my kids eating crap for lunch. And school dinners are, don't be fooled by the glossy menus.

violet - I agree that we sit down to same meal in the evening. But ds (year 6, tall and skinny) says that the main meal at lunchtime is never filling enough for him, he can always eat another meal!

When I was teaching, we had quite a number of children for whom their FSM was the only meal of the day Retropear - the sad reality is that in some areas parenting is crap. Very crap. Our dinner ladies used to pile up the plates of those kids and make sure they had seconds. But they aren't allowed to do that now.

I also had very nice family kids who actually ate a mars bar or a packet of crisps for breakfast because they 'didn't fancy anything else, so they (parent) bought something in the shop'

findesemaine - my kids are the only ones in their class who have brown bread, they ask me constantly for white as they don't want to be the odd ones out. I think that in itself may make the lunch fall foul of the healthy label.

There are time issues already in our big school with kids eating far too late as it is,food running out for the later sitting older kids.

Great it worked for you,being under scrutiny it would.The fact is schools and school dinners differ- a lot.These mythical healthy lunches which are far healthier and more filling than packed lunches don't exist in a lot of schools.My dc are starving by the time they get home.The lack of veg,over used of cheap white carbs and hunger is why they have packed lunches.

Should be means tested. However the eligibility boundries should widen

See, I think that is ridiculous, steppemum. If you're sending a decent variety of other healthy foods, why stress about a bit of white bread? Fruit or veg is just as good a way of getting that bit of your diet and I know that I loved white bread as a kid and don't really care one way or the other now and mainly eat brown, though I do love baguettes and other crusty bread.

And to be frank I'd rather the money was spent on upping the fsm threshold and supporting those who don't step up to the mark as regards food or have obese children in other ways.

The government always has to take from peter to pay Paul.

Where's the money going to come from to fund this? My guess is the welfare budget which is woefully inadequate anyway.

I bet its those they purport to help from whom they will take.

The social side if the dining will be lacking with lunchtime staff not having time to chat to the little ones or encourage them to try food

It will be a bit of a conveyer belt in some schools